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A  CONSIDERATION  OF  THE  TREND  OF  THE  TIMES  AS 

SHOWN  BY  THE  RESULTS  OF  WAR  ACTIVITIES 

IN  THE  MACHINE  SHOPS  AND  ELSEWHERE 


BY 

FRED  H.  COLVIN 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR  American  Machinist;  MEMBER  AMERICAN  SOCIETY 
OP  MECHANICAL  ENGINEERS  AND  FRANKLIN  INSTITUTE;  AUTHOR 
OF  "AMERICAN   MACHINISTS'   HANDBOOK,"    "AMERICAN   MA- 
CHINIST GRINDING  BOOK,"   "MACHINE    SHOP  CALCULA- 
TIONS," "MACHINE  SHOP  ARITHMETIC,"  "HILL 

KINK  BOOKS,"   ETC.,  ETC. 


FIRST  EDITION 


McGRAW-HILL  BOOK  COMPANY,  INC. 
239  WEST  39TH  STREET.     NEW  YORK 


LONDON:  HILL  PUBLISHING  CO.,  Lro. 
6  &  8  BOUVERIE  ST.,  E.   C. 

1919 


y 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY  THE 
MCGRAW-HILL  BOOK  COMPANY,  INC. 


THB    MAPLE    PRESS     Y  O  K 


FOREWORD 

The  stress  of  war  gave  us  little  time  to  note  the 
many  changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the 
industries  of  the  country.  Now  that  it  is  over 
we  are  face  to  face  with  new  problems  and  those 
who  have  not  ke£t  pace  with  the  trend  toward 
greater  democracy  in  industry,  are  startled  to 
find  the  changing  conditions.  But  while  this 
is  perhaps  the  greatest  problem,  there  are  many 
others  all  of  which  bear  on  production  and  on 
future  prosperity. 

The  demands  of  war  work  emphasized  the  need 
for  a  greater  supply  of  trained  mechanics  of  various 
kinds  and  showed  very  clearly  the  shortsighted- 
ness which  had  overlooked  the  fact  that  we  were 
not  training  nearly  enough  men  for  the  needs 
of  industry.  This  shortage  of  trained  men  has 
had  much  to  do  with  the  great  advance  in  wages, 
and  with  them,  the  cost  of  everyday  commodities. 

Spasmodic  efforts  have  been  made  to  create 
a  supply  of  mechanics  almost  over-night,  and 
splendid  results  have  been  accomplished  by  inten- 
sive training  under  qualified  instructors  in  some 
places.  In  others  the  thin  veneer  of  instruction 


394781 


vi  FOREWORD 

has  been  of  little  consequence.  It  has  shown 
very  clearly  however  that  intensive  training  can 
lay  a  foundation  from  which  we  can  secure  me- 
chanics of  various  kinds  in  a  very  short  time, 
and  that  such  schools  are  of  great  value  to  the 
industry  and  to  the  community. 

This  training,  however,  especially  that  which 
only  taught  one  operation,  has  not  had  the  desired 
effect  on  reducing  labor  turnover.  Nor  is  the 
cause  of  changing  from  one  factory  to  another 
always  the  result  of  higher  wages.  Sheer  mo- 
notony and  the  desire  to  do  something  different 
has  much  to  do  with  it,  and  for  the  most  part 
nothing  has  been  done  to  meet  this  phase  of  the 
problem,  if  indeed  it  is  generally  recognized. 

This  little  book  endeavors  to  point  out  some  of 
the  methods  by  which  men  and  women  may  be 
induced  to  take  an  interest  in  then-  work,  these 
being  based  to  a  considerable  extent  upon  the 
successful  experience  of  Robert  B.  Wolf  in  his 
handling  of  paper  and  pulp  mills  under  various 
conditions.  This  for  the  most  part,  has  a  direct 
bearing  in  making  them  better  workers  by  adding 
to  their  fund  of  knowledge  about  their  work  and 
the  industry  in  general.  It  can  also  be  made  to 
add  to  their  value  as  citizens,  which  is  going  to 
be  an  even  more  important  item  in  the  future 
than  in  the  past. 


FOREWORD  vii 

The  book  also  takes  up  some  of  the  broader 
problems  which  are  being  presented  and  which 
are  bound  to  confront  us  in  increasing  numbers, 
the  problems  of  shop  government  and  the  rela- 
tions between  the  employer  and  his  employees. 
For,  just  as  many  small  autocratic  governments 
are  crumbling  in  Europe,  so  many  of  our  most  fore- 
sighted  men,  both  manufacturers  and  economists, 
believe  that  similar  changes  are  bound  to  occur 
in  industry.  The  manufacturers  who  attended 
the  Babson  Conference  on  Co-operation  were  un- 
animous in  the  belief  that  arbitrary  methods  of 
shop  management  were  not  only  unjust  but  un- 
wise, and  that  the  workers  should  have  a  voice  in 
all  matters  that  affected  their  welfare  in  the  shop 
as  well  as  out. 

The  changes  wrought  by  the  war  have  not 
been  lost  on  the  workers  in  this  country  and  the 
desire  for  a  voice  in  shop  government  is  more 
deeply  rooted  than  many  realize.  Those  who 
have  studied  the  question  most  carefully  believe 
that  safety  lies  in  meeting  the  desire  half  way, 
or  more.  They  believe  that  it  is  necessary  for 
progressive  manufacturers  to  co-operate  with  the 
sane  element  of  the  labor  movement  in  order  to 
prevent  a  clash  between  the  radical  element  of 
labor  and  the  reactionary  employer,  who  is  the 
autocrat  of  his  shop  just  as  the  Czar  was  the  auto- 


viii  FOREWORD 

crat  of  all  the  Russians.  Such  clashes  are  to  be 
deplored  from  every  point  of  view. 

I  am  indebted  to  James  Hartness,  a  highly 
successful  manufacturer,  for  the  inspiration  re- 
ceived from  his  book,  "The  Human  Element  in 
Works  Management."  He  deserves  especial 
credit  for  being  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  move- 
ment for  a  better  understanding  of  the  human 
side  of  the  problems  of  the  machine  shop. 

In  the  belief  that  the  good  of  the  country,  as 
well  as  of  the  industries  demand  a  careful  consid- 
eration of  these  problems  and  that  many  changes 
are  before  us,  I  have  endeavored  to  present  some 
of  the  problems  and  to  suggest  possible  solutions 
for  some  of  them.  No  one  today  is  wise  enough 
to  outline  the  precise  way  in  which  these  problems 
will  be  solved.  But  no  citizen  who  loves  his 
country  and  his  fellow  man  can  shut  his  eyes  to 
the  impending  changes  or  strive  to  prevent  what 
the  great  majority  deem  progress. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD v 

CHAPTER  I 

LACK  OP  INTEREST  AND  LABOR  TURNOVER 1 

The  Lack  of  Interest — Breaking  up  the  Apprentice 
System — Reviving  Interest  in  the  Work. 

CHAPTER  II 

BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION 10 

Being  Misunderstood — Arousing  Interest — Explaining 
the  Product — The  Bulletin  Board — Progress  Reports. 

CHAPTER  III!; 

FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT 22 

Prevent  Erroneous  Information — The  Interest  of 
Working  for  Yourself— How  the  Attitude  of  Mind 
Affects  Work — Autocracy  Out-of-date — Overhead 
Cost  not  Appreciated — Responsibility  has  Good  Effect 
— Democracy  in  Making  Pipes — Working  out  a 
Theory  in  Shop  Management — Labor  Turnover  Keeps 
Down  both  Payroll  and  Production — How  the  White 
Motor  Company  does  It — A  Cooperative  Store. 

CHAPTER  IV 

SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION 44 

Avoid  Over-speeding — Encourage  Men  to  Learn  of 

Their  Work — Confiscating  Inventions  Demoralizing — 

The  Snagging  Grinder — Look  for  Interest  in  All  Oper- 

ix 


x  CONTENTS 

PAOB 

ations — The  Heat  Treating  Room — Value  of  Examples 
of  Work — Making  the  Man  more  Valuable — The 
Engine  Lathe. 

CHAPTER  V 

INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP 61 

The  Packard  Training  School— The  Standard  .Course 
— Learning  to  Measure — Using  the  Micrometer — A 
Combination  Measuring  Lesson — Women  hi  Garage 
Work — An  Intensive  Course  in  Fundamentals — A 
Class  of  Forty — The  Points  to  be  Remembered — Some 
Visible  Proofs  of  Success — Course  Gives  Funda- 
mentals. 

CHAPTER  VI 

NON-FlNANCIAL  INCENTIVES 92 

Extracts  from  Paper  by  R.  B.  Wolff. 

CHAPTER  VII 
THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER 108 

CHAPTER  VIII 
LATEST  IDEAS  OP  LEADING  MEN 117 

CHAPTER  IX 

COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING 137 

Prefers  to  Deal  with  Unions — Decreasing  Spoiled 
Work — The  Time  has  Come  for  Cooperation — Build- 
ing up  a  Loyal  Organization — The  Community  Must 
be  Considered — The  Suggested  Plan  for  Profit  Sharing 
—The  Square  Deal  will  Win. 


LABOR  TURNOVER, 
LOYALTY  AND  OUTPUT 


CHAPTER  I 

LACK  OF  INTEREST  AND  LABOR 
TURNOVER 

We  have  learned  much  during  the  past  few 
years  about  the  expense  of  labor  turnover  and 
its  effect  on  the  cost  of  production.  It  has 
been  shown  in  figures  how  the  actual  cost  of 
hiring  and  firing  -  a  man  may  run  from  $20  to 
$2000  depending  on  the  kind  of  a  man  and  the 
importance  of  the  job,  and  we  have  discussed 
many  ways  of  reducing  this  labor  turnover. 

The  situation  was  very  acute  in  certain  centers, 
such  as  Detroit,  where  along  in  1912  and  1913, 
some  of  the  plants  had  a  turnover  of  600  percent 
a  year.  In  other  words  the  average  length  of 
time  which  an  employee  staid  on  one  job  was 
two  months,  or  to  put  it  still  differently,  the 
whole  force  changed  on  the  average  of  six  times 
a  year.  A  large  percentage  of  the  labor  was 

i 


2  LABOR  TURNOVER 

unskilled  as  well  as  being  foreign  born,  jobs  were 
easy  to  get,  and  for  various  reasons  men  shifted 
from  factory  to  factory. 

Then  came  the  Ford  bonus  or  profit-sharing 
scheme  which  immediately  made  it  a  decided 
object  not  to  leave  the  Ford  plant,  and  the 
turnover  was  checked  in  this  plant  to  a  consider- 
able extent.  Some  of  the  conditions  of  the  bonus 
as  at  first  put  into  practice,  were  somewhat  in- 
quisitorial, some  of  which  was  probably  necessary 
in  view  of  certain  conditions  which  had  to  be  met 
and  overcome.  For  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  principal  object  in  Mr.  Ford's  mind  was  to 
make  every  man  have  a  home  of  his  own,  free 
from  boarders  or  other  outside  influence,  and  to 
give  every  child  a  fair  chance  at  an  education. 
The  methods  have  been  greatly  modified  since 
the  inception  of  the  plan  and  many  of  the  fea- 
tures to  which  some  objected,  no  longer  exist. 
The  fact  remained  however  that  turnover  was 
very  materially  reduced  and,  as  a  consequence, 
production  increased  accordingly. 

There  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  effect  of  a 
substantial  bonus  or  a  higher  wage  than  the 
average,  in  maintaining  a  constant  working 
force.  But  it  is  not  always  possible  for  a  small 
concern,  or  a  large  one  either  for  that  matter, 
to  pay  a  higher  rate  than  the  rest  of  the  com- 


LACK  OF  INTEREST  AND  LABOR  TURNOVER    3 

munity.  And  unless  this  is  done,  some  other 
means  must  be  found  to  make  it  an  object  for 
men  to  stay  in  one  shop  instead  of  wandering 
from  place  to  place,  as  has  become  the  habit  in 
some  localities. 

But  reducing  turnover  does  not  necessarily 
mean  that  you  are  getting  the  greatest  output 
from  the  plant.  For,  even  though  there  are  no 
machines  idle,  it  takes  no  expert  in  scientific 
management  to  know  that  they  are  not  all 
running  as  efficiently  as  they  might. 

The  scientific  management  expert  immediately 
wants  to  introduce  his  particular  system,  which 
in  too  many  cases  consists  of  a  series  of  printed 
forms  for  recording  what  has  been  done,  instead 
of  suggesting  a  rational  method  by  which  the 
output  can  be  increased  without  speeding  up  or 
further  antagonizing  the  workers.  Some  want 
to  study  the  problem  in  various  ways,  and  lay 
down  fixed  rules  for  every  movement  of  the  hand 
or  arm  during  the  various  operations.  Each  of 
these  has  its  place  and  can  be  made  to  secure  much 
valuable  information.  Unfortunately  this  in- 
formation is  not  always  used  judiciously  from 
the  human  or  individual  standpoint,  and  the 
result  is  still  more  antagonism.  But,  worse  than 
that,  it  tends  to  kill  real,  human  interest  in  the 
work.  And  this  is  a  far  more  important  factor 


4  LABOR  TURNOVER 

in  shop  management  than  has  been  realized  by 
many. 

THE  LACK  OF  INTEREST 

There  are  frequent  complaints  from  shop 
managers  that  men  no  longer  take  an  interest  in 
their  work,  that  "six  o'clock  and  pay  day"  is  the 
main  thought.  Careful  observers  agree  that  this 
complaint  is  true,  in  part  at  least,  and  that  it  has 
a  direct  bearing  on  production  and  on  all  indus- 
trial relations. 

Interest  in  one's  work  makes  it  an  inspiration 
to  better  things;  lack  of  interest  turns  it  into  a 
drudgery,  to  be  borne  under  protest,  and  for  as 
short  a  time  as  possible. 

The  desirability  of  securing  the  interest  of  all 
workers  in  their  daily  tasks  needs  no  argument. 
It  is  as  advantageous  to  the  employer  as  to  the 
worker,  for  it  inspires  the  employee  to  improve 
both  the  quality  and  quantity  of  the  product, 
and  it  makes  him  or  her  a  much  better  citizen 
in  every  way.  But  it  must  be  a  real  interest  in 
the  work  itself  as  well  as  in  the  financial  returns 
which  come  as  a  reward. 

We  sometimes  long  for  the  days  of  the  old- 
time  machinist  who  took  as  much  pride  and 
interest  in  his  work  as  did  the  owner  himself; 
who  did  a  good  job  because  he  was  not  satisfied 


LACK  OF  INTEREST  AND  LABOR  TURNOVER    5 

with  anything  less.  But  few  of  us  stop  to  analyze 
the  reasons  for  the  change,  and  seem  to  forget 
that  every  effect  has  its  cause.  Let  us  look  back 
and  see  what  some  of  the  causes  may  have  been. 
The  days  we  long  for  are  the  days  of  the  old- 
time  apprenticeship  when  the  boy  learned  to 
run  every  machine  in  the  shop;  when  he  had  a 
great  variety  of  work;  when  there  were  no  great 
social  distinctions  and  no  great  concentrated 
wealth,  as  we  know  it  today.  The  shops  were 
smaller  and  there  was  a  much  closer  contact 
between  the  "boss"  and  his  men,  more  chance  to 
talk  over  each  new  job  and  give  the  different  men 
a  chance  to  express  their  opinion  as  to  the  best 
way  of  doing  it.  Each  man  felt  a  much  greater 
responsibility  as  he  could  see  the  direct  effect  of 
his  work  on  the  output  of  the  shop  as  well  as  on 
its  reputation. 

BREAKING  UP  THE  APPRENTICE  SYSTEM 

Then  came  the  beginning  of  the  expansion 
of  the  machine  industry  and  with  it  the  beginning 
of  the  stealing  of  men  from  one  shop  or  from 
one  locality  by  another.  This  meant  an  in- 
crease of  wages  in  nearly  all  such  cases  and  this 
resulted  in  offering  the  apprentice  boys  who 
were  part  way  through  their  course  of  instruc- 
tion, a  much  higher  rate  than  they  were  then 


6  LABOR  TURNOVER 

receiving.  The  offer  of  much  higher  wages,  par- 
ticularly in  view  of  the  extremely  low-wage  rate 
then  paid  apprentices,  was  too  great  an  induce- 
ment, and  many  boys  jumped  their  contracts, 
even  though  they  might  now  be  better  off  if 
they  had  not  done  so.  This  led  to  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  practice  of  teaching  apprentices 
in  many  shops  and  there  are  now  comparatively 
few  which  continue  their  old-time  apprentice- 
ship courses.  Those  who  do,  believe  it  to  be  a 
paying  investment,  but  it  seems  safe  to  say  that 
the  old-time  apprenticeship,  as  an  institution, 
is  gone  forever. 

With  the  abandonment  of  the  apprentice- 
ship system  came,  of  necessity,  the  splitting  of 
the  work  up  into  operations  so  as  to  enable  less 
skilled  men  to  handle  it.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  the  " lathe  hand,"  " planer  hand'7  and  " drill 
press  machinist"  which  are  so  common  at  the 
present  time.  Added  to  this  was  the  wave  of 
so-called  scientific  management  which  swept  over 
the  country  and  which  advocated  the  still  further 
division  of  the  work  into  sub-operations  so  that 
the  worker  was  no  longer  a  machinist  in  any 
sense,  but  an  "  operator,"  whose  sole  duty  was  to 
perform  a  very  few  motions  which  could  not 
readily  be  performed  by  the  machine  itself. 

To  make  matters  worse  we  began   to  talk 


LACK  OF  INTEREST  AND  LABOR  TURNOVER     7 

about  " fool-proof"  jigs,  to  advocate  the  center- 
ing of  all  the  brains  of  the  establishment  in  the 
office,  to  plan  out  beforehand  every  operation 
and  every  movement  which  the  worker  must 
perform.  We  began  to  separate  the  shop  per- 
sonnel into  thinkers  on  the  one  hand  and  append- 
ages to  machines  of  various  kinds  on  the 
other;  to  take  out  the  little  remaining  human 
elements  and  to  substitute  an  impersonal  plan- 
ning department,  made  up  in  too  many  cases 
from  young  college  graduates  with  little  or  no 
shop  experience.  In  other  words  we  took  away 
all  the  interesting  parts  of  the  work  and  made 
the  men  into  attachments  to  machines,  demand- 
ing  in  many  cases  that  they  follow  exact  motions 
laid  down  by  others,  in  performing  their  daily  tasks. 
After  dehumanizing  the  shop,  so  far  as  con- 
sulting with  the  men  actually  on  the  job  was 
concerned,  and  making  the  operators  into  auto- 
matons so  far  as  possible,  we  found  much  discon- 
tent and  the  lack  of  interest  became  very  no- 
ticeable. But  instead  of  attempting  to  find  the 
cause,  to  get  at  the  real  psychological  reasons 
for  the  lack  of  interest,  too  many  shops  adopted 
the  paternal  attitude  and  began  to  "do  things 
for  the  employees,"  and  in  many  cases  to  do  them 
in  such  a  patronizing  way  as  to  offset  any  good 
which  they  might  otherwise  have  accomplished. 


8  LABOR  TURNOVER 

Much  of  the  so-called  welfare  work  is  to  be 
highly  commended,  it  all  depends  on  the  spirit 
which  is  behind  it  and  in  the  personnel  of  staff 
who  execute  it.  It  can  be  very  helpful  or  very 
harmful,  depending  on  the  way  in  which  it  is 
carried  out.  Anything  which  helps  to  improve 
the  health  and  safety  of  workers,  either  in  the 
shop  or  out,  helps  them  to  turn  out  more  and 
better  product.  For  even  where  we  have  "  fool- 
proof" tools  we  find  that  a  skilled  operator  can 
usually  turn  out  a  much  larger  product  than  one 
who  is  indifferent  or  inexperienced. 

And  this  is  what  gives  us  a  clue  to  a  possible 
solution  of  some  of  our  difficulties. 

REVIVING  INTEREST  IN   THE  WORK 

The  old  apprenticeship  system  has  gone  never 
to  return.  The  subdividing  of  work  into  more 
or  less  minute  operations  has  come  to  stay. 
The  problem  is  to  so  humanize  the  relation  of 
the  employee  and  the  work  as  to  revive  so  far  as 
possible  the  old-time  interest  which  is  now  lacking 
in  too  many  cases.  It  is  not  only  a  question  of 
wages,  but  a  question  of  creating  a  real  interest 
in  the  work  itself.-  When  this  is  done,  and  it 
can  be  done,  the  result  is  not  only  shown  by  a 
contented  lot  of  employees  but  by  an  increased 
output  and  a  better  quality  of  product. 


LACK  OF  INTEREST  AND  LABOR  TURNOVER     9 

The  planning  department  must  not  be  an 
autocratic  institution  which  dictates  just  how 
every  worker  in  the  shop  must  move  and  act 
under  all  circumstances.  It  must  be  the  clear- 
ing house  for  all  the  ideas  which  may  be  evolved 
in  any  department  of  the  plant.  And  the  green- 
est laborer  or  the  newest  office  boy  may  have 
an  idea  of  value.  In  any  case  they  must  be 
made  to  feel  that  they  are  a  part  of  the  institution 
and  that  no  matter  how  large  it  may  be  or  how 
small  their  part,  that  their  ideas  and  sugges- 
tions will  receive  consideration. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  " suggestion  box"  is 
good  and  should  be  used,  but  we  must  definitely 
plan  and  study  how  to  make  each  part  of  the  work 
of  real  interest  to  the  employees.  It  is  not  an 
easy  task  but  is  in  fact,  far  more  difficult  than 
the  running  of  an  ordinary  planning  department. 
It  is,  however,  capable  of  great  development  and 
can  be  made  of  greater  value  than  any  other  one 
thing  about  the  plant.  The  united  brains  of 
the  whole  number  of  employees  in  the  plant 
can  be  of  much  more  value  than  those  of  any 
selected  few,  and  the  value  of  having  every  one 
in  the  plant  interested  in  his  or  her  job,  can 
hardly  be  over-estimated.  And  we  must  not 
forget  that  this  has  a  direct  bearing  on  production. 


CHAPTER  II 
BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION 

The  first  step  is  for  the  man  at  the  top  to 
decide  whether  he  really  wants  to  build  up  a 
loyal  and  interested  organization  or  not.  And 
if  so,  whether  he  is  willing  to  pay  the  price.  For 
everything  has  its  price  and  the  more  desirable  it 
is  the  higher  the  price  we  pay  for  it.  But  the 
price  is  not  likely  to  be  in  money,  for  such  an 
organization  will  be  more  productive  than  we 
realize. 

Every  business  man  can  look  back  to  some 
period  of  his  life  where  a  faithful  few  performed 
wonders  in  productive  effort.  Not  so  much 
because  they  were  unusually  strong  or  excep- 
tionally skilled  as  because  they  were  all  keenly 
interested  in  the  work  to  be  done  and  each  worked 
without  a  question  as  to  whether  he  was  doing 
more  than  his  share  or  not.  And  then  it  often 
happened  that,  after  a  little  group  like  this  have 
pulled  the  business  up  on  to  solid  ground  and  the 
financial  tide  turned,  jealousies  and  suspicions 
as  to  the  proper  division  of  the  profits  crept  in, 
and  the  production  dropped  at  an  amazing  rate. 

10 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  11 

The  building  of  a  loyal  organization  cannot  be 
done  for  selfish  ends  alone  and  have  it  be  per- 
manent and  successful.  The  true  ends  always 
come  out  in  unexpected  ways  and  the  structure 
falls.  There  must  be  a  real  desire  to  have  a 
closely  knit  organization  in  which  each  individual 
is  recognized  as  such,  and  not  merely  as  one  of  a 
mass  with  a  number  instead  of  a  name.  The 
number  may  be  necessary  as  a  book-keeping 
expedient,  but  no  man  who  is  only  a  " number" 
to  the  man  at  the  top  can  retain  his  full  measure 
of  self-respect  and  be  a  real  unit  in  such  an 
organization. 

Each  member  of  the  organization  must  be 
made  to  feel  that  he  is  really  a  member  of  the 
family  instead  of  being  an  appendage  to  a 
machine,  with  only  a  number  tag  as  a  designation. 

The  price  of  building  such  an  organization  is 
not  one  of  money,  as  before  stated.  It  is  the 
giving  up  of  most  of  the  old  idea  of  aloofness 
and  superiority,  the  getting  of  a  really  human 
feeling  for  the  whole  organization.  This  'does 
not  mean  that  undue  familiarity  is  necessary  or 
desirable  but  it  does  mean  that  we  must  lay  aside 
all  feeling  that  would  prevent  us  from  being  as 
fair  in  judging  others  as  we  wish  them  to  be  in 
judging  us,  to  drop  any  paternal  attitude  we 
might  have  acquired.  The  price  is  in  realizing 


12  LABOR  TURNOVER 

that  it  requires  personal  work  and  human  con- 
tact; that  the  man  in  the  shop  must  always 
be  considered  as  a  human  being  with  similar 
instincts  and  desires  to  our  own,  and  that  in 
making  rules  and  regulations  we  consider  how 
the  same  rule  would  appeal  to  us  were  the  cir- 
cumstances reversed. 

BEING  MISUNDERSTOOD 

We  must  expect  that  our  motives  will  be  mis- 
understood and  that  a  certain  amount  of  suspi- 
cion will  be  found  at  the  beginning.  But  we 
must  not  forget  that  unscrupulous  managers  have 
"put  over"  various  kinds  of  wage  cuts  and  speed- 
ing-up devices  under  different  guises,  that  we 
might  also  be  suspicious  were  we  in  the  workers' 
shoes.  Then  too  there  are  over  assertive  in- 
dividuals in  the  shop  as  elsewhere,  who  are  never 
satisfied,  and  who  want  everything  in  sight  for 
themselves.  But  we  must  not  be  misled  nor 
discouraged  by  a  few  obstacles,  and  we  will  find 
that  the  great  majority  of  the  workers  will 
respond  just  as  fast  as  they  understand  and 
appreciate  the  motives  and  the  objects  to  be 
attained. 

Let  us  bear  in  mind  that  the  real  object  is  to 
secure  the  interest  of  every  worker  in  the  success 
of  the  plant,  to  make  them  realize  that  the  more 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  13 

they  know  about  the  work,  the  more  they  help  in 
every  way  possible,  the  better  for  all,  including 
themselves,  in  some  substantial  manner.  And  as 
it  is  necessary  to  arouse  and  maintain  interest  in 
the  work  and  in  the  welfare  of  the  plant,  we 
should  consider  as  many  ways  as  possible  of 
securing  this  interest  which  is  so  much  to  be 
desired,  not  only  for  itself,  but  for  its  effect  upon 
output. 

AROUSING  INTEREST 

There  are  many  ways  of  arousing  and  main- 
taining interest  and  new  ways  will  crop  up  from 
time  to  time  when  we  give  the  matter  systematic 
and  careful  attention.  A  few  methods  are  sug- 
gested herewith,  some  of  which  are  being  used 
with  satisfactory  results  in  different  places. 
These  are  only  suggestions  and  may  be  modified 
or  greatly  improved  upon  to  fit  the  special  con- 
ditions of  each  plant. 

Every  progressive  concern  goes  to  considerable 
expense  and  uses  great  care  to  arouse  enthusiasm 
in  each  salesman  regarding  the  merits  of  their 
product.  Every  salesman  can  do  better  work 
with  a  firm  conviction  that  the  product  he  sells 
has  many  points  of  superiority  over  rival  products. 
Yet  few  firms  ever  pay  any  attention  as  to 
whether  the  men  and  women  who  make  the 


14  LABOR  TURNOVER 

product,  even  know  what  it  is  for.  Is  it  not 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  if  the  workers  can  be 
enthused  over  the  product,  perhaps  by  the  same 
or  by  entirely  different  methods  than  is  used  for 
the  salesmen,  that  they  will  try  to  make  it  even 
better  or  at  least  to  maintain  its  quality? 

At  one  of  the  airplane  factories  which  actually 
built  planes  for  us  during  the  war,  they  considered 
it  good  business  to  give  the  workers  a  recess  for 
an  hour  or  even  two,  on  occasions  when  new 
types  of  planes  were  being  put  through  their 
paces  by  the  aviators.  This  cost  money  and 
might  be  considered  to  have  delayed  production. 
But  the  result  was  more  careful  attention  to 
details,  greater  care  in  all  parts  of  the  work, 
and  the  loss  of  production  was  soon  made  up, 
unconsciously  perhaps,  by  the  workers  who  were 
thrilled  by  the  performance  of  the  machines 
which  they  had  helped  to  build. 

This  also  has  another  and  perhaps  sub-con- 
scious effect  in  the  recognition  of  the  workers  as 
being  necessary  in  the  production  of  the  planes 
as  well  as  being  humanly  interested  in  seeing 
them  go  through  their  paces. 

No  opportunity  of  this  kind  should  be  over- 
looked, particularly  those  which  will  impress 
the  workers  with  the  merits  of  the  product  on 
which  they  are  working. 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  15 


EXPLAINING  THE  PRODUCT 

Details  of  the  various  parts  of  the  product, 
particularly  the  part  on  which  they  are  working, 
showing  the  relation  of  each  piece  to  the  others, 
can  well  be  shown  in  enlarged  drawings,  or  by 
the  parts  themselves,  in  section  or  otherwise  as 
may  seem  best. 

This  of  course  assumes  that  we  have  abandoned 
the  plan  of  keeping  the  workers  in  ignorance 
of  their  work  or  the  details  of  its  production. 
There  may  be  places  and  reasons  for  keeping 
some  things  secret  but  these  are  few  and  far 
between  and  most  fancied  secrets  are  secrets  only 
in  the  imagination  of  the  deluded  proprietor. 
There  are  to  be  sure,  cases  where  the  foremen 
and  superintendents  throw  a  veil  of  secrecy 
around  some  of  the  methods  which  they  have 
introduced.  In  some  cases  however  this  is  to 
hide  the  fact  that  they  have  stolen  them  from 
some  other  shop  or  to  prevent  outsiders  seeing 
how  out-of-date  they  are. 

The  benefit  to  be  gained  by  keeping  shop 
secrets  away  from  the  workers  themselves  are 
so  minute  that  there  is  very  seldom  any  excuse 
for  even  attempting  it.  It  is  notorious  that  the 
departments  of  shops  which  are  kept  from  the 


16  LABOR  TURNOVER 

gaze  of  the  visitor  are  invariably  those  with  the 
most  antiquated  equipment  and  methods. 

Showing  the  parts  of  the  machine  or  other 
apparatus  which  is  being  worked  on,  gives  the 
best  kind  of  an  object  lesson  on  the  effect  of 
inaccuracies  in  the  different  parts.  It  empha- 
sizes the  need  of  care  in  the  work  and  cannot 
fail  to  interest  the  worker  in  trying  to  bejmore 
careful. 

THE  BULLETIN  BOARD 

A  large  Bulletin  Board  in  a  conspicuous  place 
can  be  made  very  effective  in  promoting  human 
relationship  and  securing  interest  in  the  work  at 
the  same  time.  This  work  should  be  put  in  the 
hands  of  some  live  member  of  the  organization 
who  will  avoid  the  usual  dry-as-dust  announce- 
ments. Short  pithy  paragraphs,  exceptionally 
good  cartoons,  snappy  poems  which  bear  on  the 
affairs  of  the  industry  or  the  country,  and  other 
matters  can  be  used  to  advantage.  These  can 
be  so  planned  as  to  be  of  live  interest  and  to 
arouse,  unconsciously  perhaps,  a  desire  to  do 
one's  best  for  a  concern  which  takes  pains  to  let 
the  whole  shop  know  how  things  are  going. 

Even  regular  notices  can  be  made  interesting  by 
the  right  wording.  In  one  case  where  a  vacation, 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  17 

with  pay,  was  being  announced  as  an  experiment 
the  wording  was  something  like  this: 

"In  order  not  to  delay  the  work  of  the  shop  it  will  be  nec- 
essary to  arrange  vacations  with  care.  This  can  be  done 
with  a  little  cooperation.  It  is  up  to  you  whether  these 
vacations  become  a  habit  or  a  memory." 

The  spirit  of  the  announcement  coupled  with 
the  spirit  of  the  man  who  wrote  it,  which  was 
well  known  to  every  employee,  assured  the 
vacations  becoming  a  habit  instead  of  a  memory. 

Bulletins  concerning  orders  which  are  in  the 
shop  or  which  will  be  in  process  aid  greatly  in 
interesting  the  whole  force.  These  can  usually 
be  given  with  a  little  forethought  and  care  in  an 
interesting  manner.  And  they  help  to  make 
the  work  in  hand  interesting  to  the  workers  in 
different  ways. 

Can  there  be  any  question  as  to  the  men  at 
the  Ford  forge  shop  being  more  interested  in  their 
work  on  forgings  for  Liberty  motor  cylinders, 
than  as  though  they  had  not  known  what  they 
were  for?  Even  the  most  monotonous  work, 
such  as  running  a  bolt  cutter,  becomes  more 
interesting  if  the  bolts  happen  to  be  going 
to  the  Trans-Siberian  railways  or  to  other  in- 
teresting places. 

A  map  of  the  railway  on  the  Bulletin  Board 


18  LABOR  TURNOVER 

together  with  some  interesting  information  about 
the  railway  and  the  people,  would  help  along  the 
general  interest  in  the  order.  If  the  bolts  hap- 
pened to  be  going  to  that  part  of  the  world  from 
which  the  operator  came  from,  it  would  certainly 
pay  to  let  him  know  as  much  about  it  as  possible. 
Holidays  of  different  kinds  can  readily  form 
the  basis  for  an  interesting  bulletin.  This  is 
just  as  true  of  those  we  do  not  celebrate  as  those 
we  do.  In  the  case  of  the  foreign  holidays,  it 
will  do  much  to  promote  good  feeling  to  have  a 
nicely  worded  Bulletin  about  them  as  they  occur. 
Some  little  recognition  of  the  day,  by  having  the 
foremen  wear  the  appropriate  flower  or  flag,  has 
been  found  to  prevent  absences  on  that  day. 
This  also  helps  greatly  the  work  of  Americaniza- 
tion, which  is  becoming  increasingly  important. 
Schools  for  the  teaching  of  English  can  also  be 
used  to  advantage  and  form  a  bond  of  sympathy 
and  interest  which  may  be  far  reaching  in  their 
results. 

PROGRESS  REPORTS 

Special  Bulletin  Boards  can  be  used  to  show 
Progress  Reports  of  different  divisions  as  well 
as  attendance  records,  although  these  should  be 
handled  very  judiciously  in  order  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  attempting  to  create  unhealthy 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  19 

rivalry  or  as  a  speeding-up  process,  in  its  undesir- 
able form. 

Records  of  good  output  from  different  depart- 
ments, particularly  those  which  relate  to  quality 
of  the  work  done,  are  sure  to  be  of  interest. 
These  can  be  accompanied  by  examples  of  de- 
fects which  caused  the  rejection  of  a  part  or  which 
made  it  necessary  to  have  it  repaired  or  done 
over.  Object  lessons  as  to  why  certain  work  is 
bad  and  what  caused  it,  are  not  only  educational 
but  have  a  salutary  effect  in  preventing  its 
duplication.  A  little  talk  or  printed  bulletin 
regarding  the  cause  of  the  defect,  in  plain  shop 
language,  is  sure  to  be  effective. 

Exhibits  of  the  work  of  the  company  in  much 
the  same  manner  as  is  done  to  attract  customers 
always  appeals  to  the  men  who  made  it.  They 
take  pride  in  pointing  out  the  parts  on  which 
they  worked  if  it  happens  to  be  only  a  small 
part  of  the  finished  product.  Lantern  slides, 
showing  the  product,  showing  the  different 
offices  or  branch  stores  or  factories  and  showing 
the  machines  as  set  up  for  use  in  other  factories, 
all  instill  a  pride  of  accomplishment  in  those 
who  have  helped  to  produce  them.  It  is  also 
advisable  where  possible,  to  have  the  wives  and 
families  attend  these  exhibits. 

Motion   pictures   suitably   selected   to   show 


20  LABOR  TURNOVER 

either  the  getting  of  the  raw  materials  used; 
the  use  of  the  finished  product;  the  people  who 
have  produced  the  material  with  which  we  work ; 
the  users  of  the  machinery,  perhaps  in  far  away 
lands;  all  tend  to  tie  the  organization  into  a  com- 
pact group  with  a  group  consciousness  and  a 
pride  in  being  a  part  of  such  an  organization. 

We  are  just  learning  that  production  extends 
far  beyond  the  shop  walls  and  that  it  is  just  as 
necessary  to  keep  the  minds  of  the  workers 
occupied  with  pleasant  thoughts  as  to  give  him  a 
pleasant  place  in  which  to  work.  This  does  not 
mean  that  the  shop  should  undertake  to  provide 
all  his  entertainment,  as  this  would  naturally 
arouse  resentment.  But  on  the  other  hand  his 
opportunities  for  recreation  have  a  direct  effect 
on  production  and  on  labor  turnover  and  where 
it  is  possible  to  combine  instruction  and  recreation, 
as  is  often  the  case  with  motion  pictures,  it 
should  not  be  overlooked.  An  auditorium,  either 
in  the  shop  itself  or  which  can  be  secured  when 
desired  for  get-to-gethers  of  various  kinds,  has 
proved  an  excellent  way  of  promoting  the  group 
spirit.  The  Gisholt  Company  of  Madison,  Wis. 
uses  its  auditorium  to  great  advantage  in  this  way, 

The  Gisholt  Company  also  provides  a  splendid 
course  of  instruction  for  men  who  desire  to 
become  expert  operators  of  their  machines,  these 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION  21 

courses  being  open  to  certain  numbers  of  their 
own  men  and  also  to  men  from  other  companies 
who  care  to  send  them  for  this  instruction. 
This  gives  other  firms  an  opportunity  to  extend 
a  rare  privilege  to  some  of  their  own  men  and 
there  are  few  cases  where  the  opportunity  is  not 
appreciated  and  where  it  does  not  pay  big 
dividends.  If,  in  such  instances,  there  is  still  a 
fear  that  they  will  go  elsewhere  afterward, 
there  is  usually  something  wrong  with  the 
management  of  the  organization.  In  too  many 
cases  where  apparent  ingratitude  is  found,  the 
management  has  tried  to  make  a  few  privileges 
take  the  place  of  proper  shop  conditions  or 
standard  wages. 

It  is  impossible  in  passing,  to  refrain  from 
commenting  on  the  wonderful  spirit  of  self- 
reliance  and  helpfulness  which  is  developed  by 
the  Gisholt  course  already  referred  to.  This  is 
an  intensive  course  with  hard  work  crowded  into 
every  hour  of  the  day,  and  yet  the  personality 
of  the  instructors,  the  atmosphere  which  per- 
vades the  school,  makes  its  impression  on  nearly 
every  man  who  is  fortunate  enough  to  take  the 
course.  It  is  another  example  of  the  value  of 
having  personal  relations  on  a  basis  of  square 
dealing  and  trustfulness,  rather  than  of  suspicion 
and  distrust. 


CHAPTER  III 
FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT 

Many  shop  managers  are  too  apt  to  overlook 
the  fact  that  the  men  in  the  shop  are  just  as 
much  human  beings  as  themselves.  Our  large 
establishments,  where  for  convenience  in  book- 
keeping we  give  each  man  a  number,  has  much  to 
do  with  this,  and  as  a  consequence  we  think  of 
men  as  numbers  instead  of  as  individual  beings. 
In  other  cases  it  is  hard  for  those  of  us  who  have 
come  up  through  the  shop  to  realize  how  condi- 
tions have  changed.  Some  men  who  have 
worked  their  way  up  through  all  sorts  of  ad- 
versity can  see  no  reason  why  men  should  not 
work  10  to  12  hours  a  day  now  just  as  they  did, 
and  for  the  same  pay.  But  the  measure  of  a 
day's  work  has  changed  just  as  has  the  value 
of  a  dollar  when  measured  by  the  commodity  it 
buys.  » 

The  increased  size  of  our  shops  has  made  it 
impossible  for  the  "boss"  or  "old  man"  to 
have  the  same  personal  relations  as  before. 
But  that  is  no  reason  for  assuming  that  the  men 
are  not  as  human  and  as  capable  of  interest  as 

22 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         23 

ever.  We  were  always  interested  when  an  order 
from  a  foreign  country  or  from  a  distant  state, 
came  into  the  shop.  The  same  interest  can  be 
aroused  today  if  we  but  try  to  do  so. 

In  addition  to  the  operations  themselves,  some 
of  which  are  of  necessity  simple  and  monotonous, 
there  are  great  possibilities  in  securing  the 
interest  in  the  business  as  a  whole.  And  this 
may  easily  have  a  widespread  influence  on  the 
community,  on  the  whole  industry  and  on  the 
nation. 

PREVENT  ERRONEOUS  INFORMATION 

Those  who  do  not  believe  that  workers  take 
any  interest  in  the  business  side  of  industry 
have  only  to  consult  the  librarians  in  large  cities 
to  see  what  classes  of  books  are  being  read. 
And  just  as  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  teach  your 
child  the  things  he  should  know  in  the  proper 
manner,  so  is  it  better  to  prevent  distorted  ideas 
regarding  the  running  of  a  business  from  being 
absorbed  as  truth  by  the  workers  in  your  own 
shop.  Is  it  not  better  to  talk  to  them  frankly 
about  many  of  the  details  of  the  business  than  to 
have  them  get  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the  profits 
or  of  their  share  in  producing  them? 

Much  dissatisfaction  is  caused  by  men  believ- 
ing that  labor  is  confined  to  those  who  work 


24  LABOR  TURNOVER 

with  their  hands,  and  this  has  been  fostered  by 
the  false  pride  of  those  who  like  to  feel  that  they 
are  above  those  whose  work  is  manual.  A  little 
time  devoted  to  showing  just  what  part  each 
kind  of  work  plays  in  the  finished  product,  will 
help  give  a  good  foundation  for  future  discussions. 
We  can  all  help  to  make  a  much  more  correct 
understanding  of  the  real  situation  by  pointing 
out,  with  absolute  fairness,  just  the  part  each 
plays  in  the  field  of  productive  effort. 

We  can  show  the  necessity  of  the  first  idea 
of  the  machine  to  be  built,  the  making  of  the 
design  with  its  modifications  so  as  to  make  it 
work  satisfactorily  and  to  enable  it  to  be  built 
at  a  fair  price.  We  can  show  the  necessity  of 
designing  special  tools,  fixtures  and  gages  for  its 
production,  the  training  of  men  and  women  for 
the  work,  the  cost  of  the  equipment,  the  interest 
on  the  investment,  the  cost  of  superintendence, 
the  cost  of  taxes  and  of  fire  insurance,  the  cost 
of  selling  the  product,  the  shipping  cost  and  the 
necessity  for  a  margin  to  meet  emergencies. 

While  there  may  be  honest  differences  of 
opinions  as  to  the  relative  values  of  the  different 
kinds  of  services,  the  average  man  without 
business  experience  will  soon  see  that  he  is  not 
versed  in  the  details  and  that  all  the  work  is 
not  done  in  the  shop. 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT       25 

THE    INTEREST   OF   WORKING   FOR   YOURSELF 

The  housewife  has  many  monotonous  tasks. 
Washing  dishes  three  times  a  day,  sweeping, 
dusting,  ironing,  mending  socks,  and  other  duties 
are  not  in  themselves  particularly  exhilarating 
or  enjoyable.  No  intelligent  woman  could  be 
expected  to  take  a  keen  interest  in  them,  if  the 
work  itself  was  all  there  was  to  it.  But  these 
are,  in  the  case  of  a  well-established  house,  only 
a  part  of  the  story,  a  mixture  of  the  bitter  with 
the  sweet.  And  while  washing  dishes  does  be- 
come monotonous,  the  housewife  knows  that  it  is 
a  necessary  part  of  running  a  house  and  that 
she  also  shares  the  more  pleasant  portions  of  the 
game  of  life.  She  is  a  partner  in  the  firm  and 
knows  that  the  fewer  dishes  she  breaks,  and  the 
more  time  she  gets  for  other  work,  the  more 
money  they  will  have  to  spend  for  other  things. 

The  kitchen-maid  may  very  easily  find  the 
dish  washing  a  drudge's  task,  while  the  house- 
wife does  not  so  consider  it.  The  difference  lies 
in  the  interest  of  the  worker  in  the  household  as 
a  member  of  it.  If  the  maid  has  no  interest 
beside  the  usual  financial  return,  she  breathes  a 
sigh  of  relief  when  the  job  is  finished,  just  as  the 
man  in  the  shop  on  a  monotonous  job  looks 
longingly  for  quitting  time.  This  is  particularly 


26  LABOR  TURNOVER 

true  of  where  the  work  is  planned  out  in  every 
detail  and  the  worker  has  no  voice  in  the  planning. 

How  THE  ATTITUDE  OF  MIND  AFFECTS  WORK 

Just  as  the  housewife  does  many  monotonous 
and  disagreeable  tasks  joyfully  because  she  has  a 
real  interest  in  the  success  of  the  domestic  part- 
nership, so  the  husband  does  equally  monotonous 
work  without  a  murmur  if  he  too  has  an  interest 
of  some  sort  in  it.  If,  however,  he  is  only  a 
number  on  the  payroll,  an  appendage  to  a 
machine  because  he  can  supply  certain  move- 
ments which  are  difficult  to  do  mechanically, 
he  is  apt  to  be  far  happier  helping  to  do  the  dishes 
at  home,  than  he  is  in  the  shop. 

There  are  several  ways  of  arousing  his  interest, 
depending  somewhat  on  conditions  in  the  shop 
and  also  on  his  individual  temperament.  One  is 
an  interest  in  the  work  itself  and  another  is  an 
interest  in  the  shop  as  a  whole.  Both  presuppose 
a  comfortable  living  wage,  while  an  additional 
bonus  of  some  sort  makes  a  man  feel  as  though 
he  were  really  a  part  of  the  institution. 

The  financial  interest,  however,  is  by  no  means 
the  only  one  to  be  considered.  Neither  is  it  the 
strongest  motive  in  all  cases,  assuming  of  course 
that  a  fair  living  is  assured  by  the  regular  wage. 
There  is  an  ever-growing  desire  on  the  part  of 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         27 

workers  for  a  voice  of  some  sort  in  the  manage- 
ment of  the  shop,  especially  as  to  working 
conditions.  Nor  is  this  feeling  confirmed  to  the 
workers.  The  Babson  conference  on  coopera- 
tion which  was  composed  of  some  200  employers, 
representing  over  600,000  employees,  was  unani- 
mous in  advocating  the  participation  of  the 
worker  in  the  details  of  shop  management. 
Autocracy  in  the  shop  was  declared  as  much  out 
of  date  as  autocracy  in  national  government, 
and  various  plans  for  securing  industrial  democ- 
racy were  freely  discussed. 

AUTOCRACY  OUT-OF-DATE 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  management  of 
the  plant  is  to  be  turned  over  to  the  workers, 
few  of  whom  have  ever  had  any  experience  in 
business  methods.  It  does  mean,  however,  that 
the  autocratic  and  arbitrary  making  of  rules,  the 
discharge  of  men  without  reasonable  cause,  the 
setting  of  rates  without  consulting  the  workers, 
are  not  in  keeping  with  modern  methods  of  shop 
management. 

By  giving  the  workers  a  voice  in  these  matters, 
through  representatives  elected  by  them,,  or 
what  is  known  as  shop  committees,  a  new  field 
of  interest  is  aroused,  entirely  aside  from  the 
work  itself,  and  an  interest  which  has  a  strong 


28  LABOR  TURNOVER 

hold  on  some  temperaments.  Managers  who 
have  tried  some  such  plan  are  highly  pleased  with 
its  workings  in  most  cases.  It  puts  responsibility 
on  the  men  and  in  nearly  every  case  makes 
the  most  radical  men  more  careful  and  more 
conservative,  less  liable  to  advocate  unsound 
measures. 

Committees  of  this  kind  are  being  educated 
into  the  fundamentals  of  doing  business  and  in 
this  way  the  average  worker  ceases  to  expect  the 
impossible  in  the  way  of  wage  and  bonus. 

-f-  OVERHEAD  COST  NOT  APPRECIATED 

The  average  shop  man  is  fairly  well  posted  in 
the  cost  of  material  and  labor,  but  the  fact  that 
the  overhead  charges  average  one  and  a  half 
times  the  cost  of  direct  labor  is  not  appreciated. 
Nor  would  it  be  believed  unless  backed  up  by 
evidence  of  such  expenses  as  superintendence, 
rent,  heat,  power,  light,  taxes,  etc. 

A  little  time  spent  in  explaining  the  cost  of 
supervision  will  make  it  plain  that  the  less  the 
work  done  needs  looking  after  by  the  foreman, 
the  less  supervision  the  shop  needs,  the  more 
can  go  into  wages  or  bonus,  or  both.  In  other 
words,  the  more  we  look  on  the  workers  in  the 
shop  as  a  part  of  the  institution,  the  more  they 
can  be  made  to  feel  that  they  are  not  merely  a 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         29 

part  of  the  shop  equipment,  but  that  they  are 
really  a  part  of  the  organization,  the  more  they 
will  be  interested  in  the  work  and  the  less  will 
be  labor  turnover. 

*JL  RESPONSIBILITY  HAS  GOOD  EFFECT 

It  must  not  be  expected,  however,  that  all 
this  can  be  accomplished  without  striking  snags 
of  different  kinds.  There  is  sure  to  be  a  few  men 
in  the  shop  who  will  be  thorns  in  the  flesh.  They 
are  apt  to  be  skeptical,  over-critical  and  suspi- 
cious as  to  the  sincerity  of  any  employer.  Un- 
fortunately they  too  frequently  have  cause  for 
suspicion.  But  in  most  cases  this  variety  can 
be  handled  by  putting  them  on  the  committee 
or  by  suggesting  that  the  men  elect  them.  Re- 
sponsibility sobers  the  most  radical  man  and 
they  often  prove  to  be  the  most  valuable  men  in 
work  of  this  kind. 

This  sort  of  industrial  democracy  is  growing 
in  many  quarters  and  in  many  lines  of  work, 
from  machine  shops  to  large  department  stores, 
and  there  are  few  cases  where  this  plan  has  been 
abandoned  after  a  fair  trial,  which  speaks 
volumes. 

The  way  in  which  responsibility  sobers  the 
judgment  may  be  illustrated  by  the  experience 
of  the  Filene  department  store  in  Boston,  Mass. 


30  LABOR  TURNOVER 

Every  employee  of  this  company  automatically 
belongs  to  an  association  which  gives  him  or  her 
a  voice  in  the  government  of  the  store.  The 
employees  elect  a  board  which  passes  upon  all 
questions  of  discharge,  should  the  employee  feel 
that  he  has  not  been  fairly  treated.  Every 
member  of  this  board  is  an  employee  'and  its 
decision  is  final.  The  firm  is  perfectly  satisfied 
with  their  decisions.  A  well-known  judge  has 
reviewed  a  large  number  of  their  decisions  and 
has  stated  that  they  are  as  fair  as  those  handed 
down  by  the  average  court. 

There  is  also  another  instance  of  careful  con- 
sideration of  the  interests  of  the  firm.  The 
question  of  an  extra  holiday  was  under  discussion 
with  many  reasons  why  it  should  have  been 
granted.  But,  owing  to  the  season  it  was  dis- 
covered that  it  meant  a  loss  in  sales  which  would 
go  to  other  stores  and  the  employees  voted  to 
work  instead  of  taking  the  extra  holiday,  although 
it  cut  them  out  of  an  enjoyable  week-end.  This  is 
all  the  more  worthy  of  note  because  it  is  the 
Filene  custom  to  pay  full  time  on  all  holidays. 
The  responsibility  prevented  them  from  decid- 
ing in  a  selfish  manner  for  their  own  pleasure. 

Is  it  not  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  average 
employee  in  a  machine  shop  will  decide  as  in- 
telligently and  as  conscientiously  as  the  average 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         31 

employee  in  a  department  store?  And  can  we 
doubt  the  effect  of  such  a  spirit  on  the  production 
of  the  shop? 

DEMOCRACY  IN  MAKING  PIPES  L 

Another  example  of  industrial  democracy  is 
found  in  the  plant  of  Wm.  De  Muth  &  Co. 
located  at  Richmond  Hill,  N.  Y.,  manufacturers 
of  a  line  of  French  briar  and  meerschaum  pipes 
and  smokers'  articles.  The  special  machinery 
and  processes  involved  require  the  services  of 
about  eight  hundred  people. 

"Recognizing  the  imperative  need  for  closer  coopera- 
tion between  employer  and  employee  the  company  about 
August,  1917,  installed  a  system  of  organization  govern- 
ment based  on  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  and  known  as  'Industrial  Democracy.' 
It  provides  that  the  legislative  body,  or  Congress,  re- 
ferred to  above  has,  with  the  confirmation  of  the  Cabi- 
net, the  power  to  enact  and  enforce  all  laws,  rules  and 
regulations  for  the  conduct  of  the  factory,  and  its  deci- 
sions are  binding  as  well  upon  the  company  as  upon  the 
employees.  The  Cabinet  is  composed  of  members  of  the 
executive  board,  together  with  the  factory  and  the  sales 
managers,  the  president  of  the  corporation  being  its  pre- 
siding officer. 

"The  Senate  includes  the  superintendent,  the  heads  of 
departments  and  the  factory  foremen.  As  this  body  al- 

1  From  the  American  Machinist,  by  ELLSWORTH  SHELDON. 


32  LABOR  TURNOVER 

ready  existed  when  the  system  was  installed,  the  neces- 
sity for  creating  it  did  not  arise,  but  the  constitution 
provides  that  changes  in  the  personnel  of  the  factory 
executives  or  additions  to  their  number  may  be  made  by 
the  legislative  bodies.  Ordinarily  if  a  new  foreman  were 
needed  a  candidate  would  be  elected  by  the  House,  subject 
to  the  confirmation  of  the  Senate  and  Cabinet,  but  if  a  man 
of  special  or  technical  training  were  required  and  such 
a  man  was  not  available  among  the  employees  the  Cabinet 
would  submit  a  candidate  from  the  outside,  subject  to  the 
ratification  of  the  other  bodies. 

"The  House  of  Representatives  is  limited  to  thirty  mem- 
bers who  are  elected  annually  at  a  mass  meeting  of  the 
employees.  As  the  number  employed  at  present  is  about 
eight  hundred,  one  member  of  the  House  therefore  rep- 
resents about  twenty-five  employees.  To  be  eligible  for 
membership  the  candidate  must  have  three  qualifica- 
tions: First,  he  must  have  been  in  the  employ  of  the  com- 
pany one  year  or  more;  second,  he  must  understand  and 
speak  English;  third,  he  must  be  known  by  all  to  be  'on 
the  square.'  In  this  application  of  democratic  principles 
there  is  no  question  of  equal  suffrage  as  the  gentler  sex  is 
well  represented  in  both  legislative  branches. 

"Meetings  of  the  three  governing  bodies  are  held  regu- 
larly each  week,  the  Senate  being  convened  at  2  o'clock 
p.m.  and  the  House  at  3 : 30.  The  meeting  place  is  a  room 
on  an  upper  floor  of  the  office  building  far  enough  removed 
from  the  factory  to  avoid  the  noise  and  confusion.  The 
Cabinet  meets  at  10  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  the  same  day. 
Each  house  of  Congress  elects  a  chairman,  or  president, 
and  a  secretary  who  keeps  a  minute  record  of  all  proceedings. 

"Business  is  transacted  according  to  the  usual  parlia- 
mentary procedure.  Questions  of  wages,  holidays,  hours 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         33 

of  work,  benefit,  etc.,  come  under  discussion;  troubles 
or  misunderstandings  are  brought  to  light  and  straight- 
ened out;  new  and  better  plans  of  operation  are  discussed 
and  recommended — whether  it  be  improved  machinery, 
tools,  methods  or  men,  these  bodies  of  Congress  have  the 
privilege  of  using  and  do  use  their  brains  in  the  interest 
of  such  better  service.  Committees  are  appointed  by  either 
branch  separately  or  jointly,  and  there  are  standing  commit- 
tees on  such  matters  as  safety,  suggestion,  welfare,  ways 
and  means,  etc.,  each  reporting  to  its  respective  appointing 
body  its  findings,  which  are  deliberated  upon  and  if  found 
feasible  are  recommended  for  enactment  into  law. 

"A  resolution  by  any  branch,  including  the  Cabinet, 
does  not  become  law  until  ratified  by  both  the  other  bodies, 
but  when  such  resolution  does  become  law  it  is  considered 
a  mutual  obligation.  Suggestions  upon  any  pertinent  sub- 
ject may  be  made  to  the  Suggestion  Committee,  which  is 
empowered  to  make  any  award  they  deem  suitable  up  to  $5. 
If  in  its  estimation  a  suggestion  is  of  greater  value  it  pre- 
sents a  resolution  before  the  legislative  bodies  and  the  addi- 
tional amount  of  the  award  is  thus  determined.  Likewise 
the  Safety  and  Welfare  committees  may  order  minor  changes 
and  improvements  looking  toward  the  safety  of  the  employee 
and  the  betterment  of  his  working  conditions,  reserving  all 
matters  of  major  importance  for  the  action  of  the  Congress. 

How  DIVIDENDS  ABB  PAID 

"At  the  expiration  of  each  two-week  period  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  entire  shop  is  determined  by  the  relative 
value  of  its  output  to  its  cost  of  production;  then  an  em- 
ployees' dividend  is  paid,  the  basis  of  which  is  50  percent 
of  the  savings  accomplished  during  the  two  weeks  by 
improved  efficiency.  If,  as  was  the  case  when  I  was  present, 


34  LABOR  TURNOVER 

the  dividend  was  16  percent,  then  each  employee  receives 
in  a  separate  envelope  marked  'Employee's  Dividend/ 
an  amount  of  cash  equal  to  15  percent  of  the  wages  he 
drew  for  that  two-weeks'  period.  The  1  percent  reserved 
pays  for  an  insurance  policy  on  the  life  of  each  employee, 
and  the  face  of  that  policy  calls  for  an  amount  equal  to  the 
annual  earnings  of  such  individual. 

"To  the  leading  department  for  each  two-week  period  is 
presented  a  large  American  flag  which  is  hung  in  the  de- 
partment, serving  not  only  as  an  evidence  of  supremacy, 
but  a  constant  incentive  to  further  effort  and  an  emblem  of 
patriotism.  This  flag,  however,  will  not  stay  in  one  de- 
partment without  effort  on  the  part  of  the  employees  thereof, 
as  unless  their  lead  in  efficiency  is  maintained  the  flag  will 
at  the  end  of  the  period  go  to  that  department  that  has  suc- 
ceeded in  boosting  the  record.  The  first  department  win- 
ning the  flag  three  times  is  given  a  supper,  the  cost  of  which 
is  liberally  shared  by  the  company  and  attended  by  the 
officials. 

"As  a  result  of  the  location  and  the  unsettled  condition 
of  the  labor  market  the  employees  comprise  a  rather  mixed 
nationality,  and  until  recently  the  labor  turnover  at  the 
plant,  in  common  with  many  other  industries,  was  such 
as  to  cause  much  disquiet,  but  since  the  installation  of 
this  system  of  shop  government  each  employee  realizes 
that  instead  of  his  being  a  mere  cog  in  a  wheel,  to  be  used  or 
dispensed  with  at  some  unknown  person's  convenience, 
he  has  become  a  useful  and  intelligent  unit  of  the  organiza- 
tion with  a  voice  in  its  management,  something  to-say  about 
how  long  and  under  what  conditions  his  best  work  can  be 
done  and  how  much  he  shall  receive  for  it.  This  has  the 
effect  of  increasing  his  self-respect  and  respect  for  his  job, 
together  with  a  sense  of  his  personal  obligation  to  his 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         35 

fellows.  It  is  giving  him  an  insight  into  the  problems 
that  harass  his  employers  and  it  creates  respect  for  them 
and  makes  him  willingly  share  their  burdens.  Above  all 
it  awakens  the  sense  of  civic  responsibility,  inspires  him  to 
study  our  language  and  our  customs,  and  in  that  way  strikes 
a  blow  at  what  is  perhaps  the  most  insidious  evil  at  the  root 
of  our  republican  form  of  government — the  ignorance  and 
indifference  of  the  individual  of  and  to  the  things  that  are  of 
vital  importance. 

THE  SYSTEM  TEACHES  AMERICANISM 

"The  following  is  an  instance  of  the  way  in  which  the 
system  teaches  Americanism.  A  resolution  was  intro- 
duced and  passed  in  the  Congress  naming  certain  days 
as  holidays,  and  though  this  list  was  made  up  by  a  body 
two-thirds  of  whom  were  of  foreign  birth,  every  day  named 
was  strictly  an  American  legal  holiday.  If  an  employee 
should  remain  away  from  the  factory  any  day  not  included 
among  the  holidays  appearing  on  the  accepted  list  without 
reasonable  excuse  he  loses  one-quarter  of  his  dividend; 
if  two  days  he  would  lose  one-half,  three  days,  three-quarters, 
and  if  four  days  he  would  lose  the  entire  dividend  for  that 
period;  that  is,  if  he  lost  four  days  out  of  a  possible  12  he 
would  lose  the  dividend  that  would  accrue  during  the  12- 
day  period.  The  object  of  this  somewhat  drastic  penalty  is 
to  avoid  low  production  and  running  the  shop  shorthanded, 
which  obviously  would  cut  down  the  surplus  available 
for  dividends,  and  as  it  applies  to  everybody,  it  is  therefore 
fair  to  all. 

"The  system  was  installed  by  Albert  J.  Leitch,  of  Phila- 
delphia, who  is  an  enthusiast  on  the  subject  of  cooperation. 
Mr.  Leitch  does  not  claim  perfection  for  his  method,  but 
he  says  that  it  is,  like  the  American  Government,  the  best 


36  LABOR  TURNOVER 

there  is,  and  though  it  has  been  in  operation  only  a  year 
in  the  Demuth  plant  it  has  already  produced  substantial 
results  and  its  advantages  are  growing  more  evident  each 
day  not  only  in  increased  financial  returns,  but  in  smoother 
production." 

WORKING  OUT  A  THEORY  IN  SHOP 

MANAGEMENT 

The  changing  attitude  of  shop  managers  and 
owners  is  shown  in  the  view  of  executives  ex- 
pressed in  what  follows.  The  practical  applica- 
tion of  these  ideas  shows  very  clearly  in  the 
part  which  deals  with  the  White  Motor  Co. 
This  is  particularly  interesting  on  account  of 
its  utilization  of  men  of  over  40  years  of  age  and 
the  way  in  which  the  shop  is  run  by  committees, 
giving  the  men  a  direct  voice  in  the  management. 

The  majority  of  the  opinions  here  expressed 
are  those  of  a  careful  observer  of  human  nature,  a 
successful  manager  of  a  large  shop,  whose  judg- 
ment is  based  on  actual  manufacturing  conditions. 
Only  modesty  on  his  part  prevents  me  from  quot- 
ing him  by  name  and  crediting  him  with  the 
first  part  of  this  section,  as  I  should  like  to  do. 
The  second  part  comes  from  a  source  from  which 
I  am  permitted  to  quote  only  the  firm,  but  not 
the  individuals  who  have  helped  to  build  the 
system  to  its  present  successful  stage. 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         37 

This  manager  views  the  question  of  labor 
turnover  from  two  angles — that  of  securing  such 
productive  efficiency  as  will  enable  a  larger 
return  to  be  given  to  the  worker,  and  the  keeping 
down  of  the  payroll  to  please  directors  who 
believe  this  is  the  only  way  to  secure  the  largest 
returns  for  themselves.  Regarding  the  second 
point,  he  makes  it  clear  that  whittling  down  wages 
does  not  secure  the  largest  product  from  the 
equipment  because  there  is  no  incentive  to  further 
efforts.  In  fact,  wherever  piece  rates  are  cut 
when  wage  earnings  exceed  a  given  amount 
there  is  a  distinct  effort  to  keep  down  the  output. 

LABOR  TURNOVER  KEEPS  DOWN  BOTH  PAYROLL 
AND  PRODUCTION 

In  the  same  way  a  large  labor  turnover  enables 
a  goodly  proportion  of  those  on  the  payroll  to 
jmain  at  the  minimum  wage,  and  this  is  proba- 
bly one  of  the  reasons  why  excessive  labor  turn- 
over has  not  been  more  strongly  objected  to  in 
the  past.  With  a  small  labor  turnover  we  have  a 
comparatively  constant  body  of  men,  and  in  such 
cases  it  becomes  necessary  to  increase  the  daily 
or  hourly  rates  occasionally,  if  not  regularly, 
which  is  not  very  pleasing  to  some  types  of  shop 
managers. 


38  LABOR  TURNOVER 

If  it  means  anything  to  a  firm  to  be  able  to 
point  with  pride  to  men  who  have  been  with 
them  for  many  years  it  means  that  the  fact  of 
their  working  in  the  shop  so  long  a  period  is  an 
asset  to  the  company  and  consequently  it  has  a 
cash  value.  For  there  are  other  factors  besides 
actual  output  to  add  to  a  man's  value.  Dependa- 
bility in  emergencies;  care  of  machines  and  of 
products;  effect  on  the  men,  as  well  as  other 
things  which  are  difficult  to  measure  in  dollars 
and  cents,  all  have  real  value  to  a  concern  and 
add  to  the  cash  balance  at  the  end  of  the  year. 

On  the  other  hand  there  are  men  in  every  con- 
cern who  could  well  be  spared,  yet  ties  such  as 
long  service  and  others  prohibit  their  dismissal 
unless  it  is  desired  to  violate  the  rule  of  fair  play 
and  cause  an  actual  loss  owing  to  its  impression 
on  the  other  men.  When  an  efficiency  engineer 
undertakes  to  rejuvenate  an  old  shop  he  generally 
begins  by  making  a  clean  sweep,  especially  of  the 
heads  of  departments.  This  course  also  has  its 
disadvantages,  as  many  a  shop  which  has  suffered 
from  the  effects  of  an  incompetent  systematizer 
has  found  out  to  its  sorrow. 

How  THE  WHITE  MOTOR  COMPANY  DOES  IT 

Coming  now  from  the  theories  of  this  careful 
observer  to  a  concrete  example  of  what  one  large 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         39 

firm  has  been  doing  along  similar  lines,  it  is  in- 
teresting to  note  that  some  very  advanced  ideas 
of  equitable  relationship  toward  the  men  are 
being  carried  out  in  a  number  of  cases. 

The  work  which  the  White  Motor  Co.  of 
Cleveland  has  been  doing  for  a  number  of  years 
in  this  way  is  highly  interesting  and  might  almost 
be  called  revolutionary  by  the  reactionary  mana- 
ger. Some  time  ago  those  in  charge  of  the 
employment  of  men  noticed  that,  in  common 
with  almost  all  large  manufacturing  concerns, 
the  average  age  of  their  employees  was  very  low — 
about  26  years,  according  to  the  statistics 
gathered.  In  some  larger  shops  it  is  even  lower, 
and  this  alone  accounts  in  all  probability  for 
much  of  the  labor  turnover.  The  spirit  of 
change  and  unrest  is  usually  much  stronger  at 
this  age  than  later,  due  in  part  to  the  desire  for 
more  experience,  which  is  a  very  good  trait, 
but  does  not  assist  large  production  while  the 
changes  are  going  on. 

Beginning  about  three  years  ago  the  White 
Motor  Co.  decided  to  raise  the  average  age  of  its 
employees,  and,  reversing  the  policy  of  Dr. 
Osier,  which  has  done  the  machine-manufactur- 
ing industry  so  much  harm  and  has  worked  such 
cruel  hardships  on  many  perfectly  capable  men  of 
middle  age,  it  now  gives  preference  to  men  over 


40  LABOR  TURNOVER 

30  years  of  age.  Needless  to  say  the  company 
does  not  chloroform  him  when  he  reaches  the 
age  of  40  years. 

Continuing  this  feature  the  White  company  has 
gradually  increased  the  average  age  of  its  em- 
ployees to  about  40  years,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  production  per  man  has  increased  in  a  most 
interesting  and  hopeful  manner.  Part  of  this 
increase  is  due  no  doubt  to  the  fact  that  the 
company  has  reduced  its  labor  turnover 
very  materially,  the  average  being  between 
3  and  4  percent  a  month,  and  this  was  in 
spite  of  many  of  its  men  being  called  to  the 
colors.  Along  with  this  the  number  of  absentees 
from  the  shop  during  working  hours  has  been 
considerably  reduced.  This  of  itself  is  a  highly 
desirable  accomplishment. 

Realizing  that  proper  wages  and  good  shop 
conditions  were  the  two  prime  elements  in  the 
successful  handling  of  labor,  the  management 
has  grappled  firmly  with  the  problem  and  is 
endeavoring  intelligently  to  meet  the  changed 
conditions  of  living  and  of  ideas.  A  careful 
study  of  the  cost  of  living  in  Cleveland  showed 
the  increase  since  1914.  With  this  as  a  basis 
the  weekly  wages  have  been  increased  to  equal 
the  increase  in  living  cost.  The  interesting 
point  is  that  although  the  wages  have  about 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         41 

doubled,  the  actual  cost  of  production  has  been 
increased  very  little. 

The  shop  is  managed  through  committees,  and 
here  is  where  the  older  men  are  particularly 
valuable.  Their  experience,  extending  back  over 
many  years  in  the  shop,  makes  a  most  effective 
balance  wheel  and  aids  greatly  in  securing  a 
safe  interpretation  of  the  newer  ideas  and 
methods  of  management.  The  younger  men 
prevent  the  management  from  staying  in  a  rut, 
and  the  older  men  keep  the  changes  within 
commercial  bounds. 

Everything  is  done  to  make  the  men  feel  that 
they  are  a  part  of  the  institution  and  not  mere 
cogs  in  the  machinery.  The  employee  is  given 
an  opportunity  to  express  himself  through  shop 
committees  which  are  elected  by  the  men  of  the 
different  departments,  one  man  representing 
approximately  ten  employees.  These  commit- 
tees, which  change  monthly  on  the  rotary  system, 
meet  every  alternate  week  and  shop  conditions 
are  discussed.  The  meetings  have  brought 
about  many  improvements  and  have  been 
profitable  to  the  men  and  the  company.  A 
spirit  of  friendly  interest  pervades  the  whole 
establishment,  and  this  without  any  of  the 
paternalism  that  frequently  mars  so  many 
well-intentioned  plans. 


42  LABOR  TURNOVER 

A  COOPERATIVE  STORE 

The  men  run  a  cooperative  store  in  the  shop, 
hiring  their  own  clerk  and  directing  it  by  a 
committee  chosen  from  among  themselves.  The 
company  furnishes  the  necessary  space  rent  free. 
For  the  present  the  store  confines  itself  to  selling 
cigars,  candy  and  the  smaller  commodities. 

The  company  runs  a  splendid  kitchen  con- 
ducted by  competent  people,  which  supplies  all 
or  part  of  a  meal  at  cost  or  less.  The  meal 
includes  soup,  sandwiches  and  fruit.  Some  idea 
of  the  popularity  of  the  kitchen  may  be  had  from 
the  fact  that  during  1917  it  served  599,280 
sandwiches,  an  average  of  2600  a  day.  The  daily 
average  for  soup  was  1375  bowls;  for  coffee,  1103 
cups,  and  for  milk,  625  bottles.  The  average 
monthly  income  was  about  $5000.  About  215 
office  employees  are  fed  in  the  dining  room. 

All  kinds  of  healthful  activities  are  encouraged. 
A  band  of  40  pieces  composed  entirely  of  em- 
ployees gives  a  concert  in  the  corridor  every 
Wednesday  noon.  There  is  also  a  glee  club 
and  a  stringed  orchestra.  There  were  two  base- 
ball clubs  during  1917,  which  won  the  city  cham- 
pionship, a  soccer  football  club  and  a  ladies' 
bowling  club. 

Notwithstanding  these  features,  the  manage- 
ment however  believes,  as  stated  before,  that 


FORGETTING  THE  HUMAN  ELEMENT         43 

right  wages  and  proper  shop  conditions  are  the 
first  considerations. 

No  women  are  employed  in  the  shop,  except  in 
the  upholstering  department,  but  they  fill  many 
office  positions. 

Perhaps  the  most  startling  feature  of  the 
management  program  is  the  method  of  increasing 
wages  with  fair  regularity.  The  theory  is  that  a 
man  should  become  more  valuable  the  longer  he 
is  with  the  company.  With  this  as  a  basis  the 
foreman  who  does  not  recommend  his  men  for  a 
raise  every  six  months  is  called  into  the  office 
and  asked  for  an  explanation.  This  procedure 
is  so  contrary  to  the  usual  one  of  admonishing  a 
foreman  for  suggesting  an  increase  that  it  seems 
almost  unbelievable;  yet  the  plan  is  working 
out  very  satisfactorily. 

Here  then  is  a  clear  indication  of  the  trend 
which  is  making  management  more  and  more  a 
truly  scientific  problem.  The  new  methods  of 
management  must  constantly  recognize  the  in- 
dividuality of  the  men  and  must  realize  that  they 
are  in  no  sense  a  part  of  the  machine  equipment, 
as  they  are  considered  by  some  of  the  so-called 
systems  of  management.  Just  how  far  these 
ideas  can  be  carried  out  in  other  shops  depends 
on  divers  conditions;  in  any  event  they  are  an 
inspiration  to  those  who  are  looking  for  newer 
and  better  shop  relations. 


CHAPTER  IV 
SECURING    INTEREST    BY    INSTRUCTION 

The  following  suggestions  as  to  methods  of 
interesting  the  employees  in  various  plants  are 
based  upon  hints  from  the  experience  of  Robert 
B.  Wolf.  His  work  has  been  among  pulp  and 
paper  mills  so  that  his  plans  must  be  modified 
to  some  extent  for  machine  shop  work.  As  will 
be  seen  the  method  is  based  upon  a  systematic 
effort  to  educate  the  workers  in  the  theory  as  well 
as  the  practice  of  their  occupation,  and  in  this 
way  differs  from  much  that  has  been  previously 
done  in  modern  shops.  It  has,  however,  the 
sound  basis  that  no  one  can  be  interested  in 
things  which  they  do  not  understand,  and  is 
absolutely  opposed  to  the  plan  which  makes 
employees  merely  automatons  or  appendages  of 
a  machine  of  any  kind. 

An  excellent  method  of  arousing  interest  in 
the  individual  is  to  make  him  see  his  relation  to 
the  rest  of  the  shop,  and  the  part  he  plays  in  the 
group  as  a  whole.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons 
that  the  working  of  men  in  teams  is  beneficial  in 
several  ways.  The  group  or  team  makes  it  very 
evident  to  all  that  no  one  member  is  independent 

44 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       45 

but  that  all  depend  on  each  other.  The  man 
with  an  extremely  individualistic  nature  soon 
learns  that  he  cannot  hold  himself  aloof  from  the 
rest  but  that  all  must  do  their  share  and  do  it 
at  the  proper  time,  to  secure  the  maximum  output. 

Team  work  shows  every  man  in  the  group  the 
necessity  for  cooperation.  A  spurt  on  the  part 
of  one  and  a  lagging  on  the  part  of  another,  both 
interfere  with  securing  the  best  results.  These 
practical  examples  of  the  benefits  of  cooperation 
help  in  making  each  man  a  better  citizen  as  well 
as  a  better  man  for  the  organization. 

The  group  or  team  plan  can  be  used  exten- 
sively in  securing  both  quality  and  quantity  and 
is  much  better  in  every  way  than  inciting  indi- 
vidual competition.  When  the  completed  product 
depends  on  the  work  of  ten  different  teams  or 
groups,  it  is  easy  to  inaugurate  a  friendly  rivalry 
just  as  exists  between  football  or  baseball  teams. 

AVOID  OVER-SPEEDING 

Care  should  be  taken,  however,  to  avoid  undue 
stimulation,  as  excessive  speeding  up  is  sure  to 
have  its  reaction.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  rate  at 
which  men  and  women  can  work  economically  for 
the  firm,  for  themselves  and  for  the  community. 
Special  spurts  can  be  made  when  occasion 
really  demands  it,  but  it  does  not  pay  to  set  too 


46  LABOR  TURNOVER 

hard  a  pace  as  a  standard  to  be  lived  up  to  day 
after  day.  It  is  far  more  important  that  every 
one  of  the  ten  teams  show  a  good  average  output 
than  that  one  or  two  make  an  excessive  record 
and  three  or  four  others  fall  behind  the  average. 

The  safest  sort  of  stimulation  is  that  of  quality 
rather  than  quantity.  Mr.  Wolf  found  this  of 
the  greatest  value  in  his  work  in  the  pulp  and 
paper  mills.  The  desire  for  quality  records  led 
the  men  in  various  groups  to  suggest  means  of 
testing  quality  and  they  were  encouraged  to 
work  out  new  methods  of  securing  it.  The  men 
also  had  a  hand  in  determining  the  quality,  one 
of  their  own  number  being  chosen  to  help  make 
the  tests. 

Team  records  for  quality  and  for  spoiled  work 
can  be  posted  with  less  danger  of  hard  feelings 
than  in  the  case  of  individuals.  And  it  can  be 
safely  left  to  each  group  not  to  let  the  guilty 
member  or  members  forget  who  is  responsible 
for  the  low  records. 

ENCOURAGE  MEN  TO  LEARN  OF  THEIR 
WORK 

The  fear  that  men  will  learn  the  reasons  for 
shop  processes  and  methods,  and  so  be  able  to 
take  this  knowledge  to  other  shops,  has  caused 
some  to  try  and  prevent  men  from  knowing  what 


ifiCURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       47 

they  are  doing.  In  heat  treating  for  example, 
the  recording  pyrometers  are  sometimes  placed 
in  a  locked  room  and  only  signal  lamps  used  at 
the  furnaces.  In  other  words,  the  men  who 
actually  do  the  work,  know  nothing  of  the  real 
process,  only  that  a  red  light  means  too  hot  or 
a  blue  light  too  cold. 

This  method  can  hardly  hope  to  secure  or  to 
hold  the  interests  of  men  who  are  worth  while, 
or  who  have  the  capacity  to  be  of  great  value  to 
a  plant.  _  We  must  make  up  our  minds  that 
before  men  can  be  really  interested  in  their  work, 
they  must  know  the  whys  and  wherefores  of  it^ 
all;  they  must  know  tlf£^wliy"  of  the  various 
operations  as  well  as  "how"  they  are  performed. 
No  one  can  be  interested  in^  work  he  does  not 
understand,  nor  can  he  aid  in  sqlying^the  prob- 
lems as  they  develop.  We  must  teach  them  how 
to  do  the  work  well,  the  results  to  be  obtained  and 
why  we  think  our  way  is  best.  And  we  must 
realize  that  unless  our  employees  are  worth  more 
to  us  than  to  anyone  else,  it  is  probably  because 
we  have  not  utilized  them  to  the  best  advantage. 
It  is  well  to  consider  how  much  it  would  cost  to 
train  a  new  man,  with  the  chance  of  having  to 
train  two  or  three  before  securing  the  right  one, 
before  deciding  that  we  cannot  afford  to  pay 
more  than  a  certain  fixed  wage.  Not  only  must 


48  LABOR  TURNOVER 

the  cost  of  hiring  and  firing  be  considered,  but 
also  the  value  of  the  experience,  the  loyalty  and 
the  possibilities  of  valuable  suggestions. 

CONFISCATING  INVENTIONS  DEMORALIZING 

The  handling  of  suggestions  is  a  matter  which 
may  mean  much  or  little  according  to  the  meth- 
ods employed.  The  practice  of  some  concerns 
of  confiscating  every  invention  of  their  employees 
in  consideration  of  a  dollar  or  maybe  ten,  cannot 
possibly  secure  loyalty  or  good  feeling.  An 
adequate  return  will  prove  a  good  investment 
in  every  case.  In  the  same  way,  a  system  of 
fair  and  just  remuneration  for  suggestions  which 
save  money  for  the  firm,  is  sure  to  pay  a  big 
dividend.  A  royalty  is  much  better  than  a 
lump  sum,  because  this  pays  more  in  accord  with 
its  value  and  it  also  stimulates  the  interest  of 
the  whole  force  over  a  long  period. 

Having  decided  on  the  plan  of  stimulating  the 
interests  of  employees,  the  next  step,  and  by 
far  the  harder  part  of  the  proposition,  is  to  decide 
how  this  can  be  done.  The  experience  of  Robert 
Wolf,  who  will  be  quoted  quite  extensively 
in  a  later  chapter,  is  of  value  as  he  was  successful 
to  a  marked  degree.  And  the  basis  for  his 
success  seems  to  be  in  teaching  the  workers  the 
reason  for  each  step  in  the  process,  the  effect 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       49 

of  different  methods,  and  all  the  fundamentals 
of  the  portion  of  the  industry  in  which  they  are 
engaged.  This  is  much  more  difficult  than  to 
plan  out  a  set  of  rules  or  a  sequence  of  motions 
to  be  automatically  followed.  But  it  is  also 
of  much  more  value  to  the  industry,  to  the  man 
and  to  the  community. 

Arousing  the  interest  of  the  worker  in  his  work 
is  of  prime  importance  and  it  will  pay  to  devote 
considerable  time  and  ingenuity  in  devising 
ways  and  means  of  doing  it,  not  to  mention  the 
time  to  be  spent  after  the  way  has  been 
discovered.  There  are  few  jobs  where  at  least 
some  interest  cannot  be  aroused  either  with 
the  operation  itself,  the  machine  or  tools  with 
which  the  operation  is  performed,  the  part  the 
operation  plays  in  the  finished  piece  or  some  of 
the  history  of  the  product  and  its  distribution. 

First  we  must  get  rid  of  the  notion  that  the 
only  thing  the  worker  should  do  is  to  turn  out 
as  much  product  as  possible  (although  this  can 
of  course  never  be  lost  sight  of),  and  that  nothing 
else  is  any  of  his  business.  Then  we  must  find 
the  easiest  point  of  interest  which  will  at  the  same 
time  add  to  the  man's  knowledge  and  have  a 
bearing  on  his  work.  For  we  must  not  forget 
that  we  all  have  a  duty  in  the  training  of  as 
many  men  as  possible,  while  not  interfering 


50  LABOR  TURNOVER 

too  much  with  our  production.  The  need  of 
skilled  men  has  been  clearly  shown  during  the 
past  two  years. 

THE  SNAGGING  GRINDER 

Running  a  plain,  snagging  grinder  in  the 
foundry  can  be  perhaps,  one  of  the  most  uninter- 
esting jobs  to  be  found,  but  it  is  not  hopeless. 

First  teach  the  man  the  necessity  for  wearing 
goggles  to  protect  his  earning  capacity  for  his 
family  as  well  as  for  his  own  comfort.  Second, 
the  need  of  his  own  special  goggles  for  sanitary 
reasons.  Third,  that  the  wearing  of  goggles 
is  a  duty  to  the  community  as  men  with  im- 
paired sight  or  blind  are  apt  to  become  a  charge 
on  the  city,  hence  the  community  has  a  right 
to  insist  on  his  taking  care  of  his  eyes. 

The  advantage  of  having  the  grinding  wheel 
kept  true;  the  disadvantage  of  using  a  wheel 
that  is  loaded  or  glazed;  the  difference  between 
the  two;  the  fact  that  the  grinding  wheel  is 
made  from  a  mineral  or  from  the  product  of  an 
electric  furnace,  as  the  case  may  be;  the  way 
in  which  the  crystals  are  held  in  a  bond;  the 
fact  that  a  wheel  is  really  a  revolving  cutter 
with  thousands  of  cutting  points;  the  reasons 
some  grades  and  grains  cut  better  and  stay  sharp 
longer;  the  best  speed  to  run  the  wheel;  some 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       51 

idea  of  the  power  required;  perhaps  a  notion 
of  where  the  power  comes  from,  and  similar 
points  can  be  used  to  get  some  sort  of  interest 
in  the  job  itself.  Perhaps  pictures,  either  stere- 
opticon  or  motion  pictures  showing  how  these 
grinding  wheels  are  made,  may  make  a  lasting 
impression.  If  it  does  it  means  more  and  better 
work,  together  with  better  care  of  the  wheels. 
Perhaps  none  of  these  may  appeal  to  all  men 
but  there  is  some  way  unless  they  are  of  low 
mentality,  and  it  will  usually  pay  to  find  it. 

LOOK  FOR  INTEREST  IN  ALL  OPERATIONS 
If  there  are  as  many  possible  channels  of 
interest  in  a  foundry  snagging  wheel,  how  many 
more  are  there  in  other  jobs.  The  common  drill 
press  affords  a  number  when  the  question  is 
carefully  studied. 

This  work  may  well  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  a 
good  man  with  imagination  and  human  interest 
and  he  will  work  out  a  plan  which  will  be  sure 
to  appeal,  in  some  way  or  other,  to  all  of  normal 
mentality.  The  others  must  be  led  as  best 
we  may,  but  they  rarely  object  to  the  more 
monotonous  occupations. 

THE  HEAT  TREATING  ROOM 
We  have  already  referred  to  the  Heat  Treating 
Room  and  as  it  affords  a  good  opportunity  for 


52  LABOR  TURNOVER 

interesting  any  live  man  or  woman  who  works 
in  it,  it  makes  a  good  starting  place  for  sugges- 
tions, along  the  lines  practised  by  Mr.  Wolf  in  his 
pulp  and  paper  mill  work. 

Many  experienced  men  who  have  good  success 
in  this  work,  depend  in  many  cases  entirely  on 
their  sense  of  sight  for  the  results  obtained. 
Some  of  these  oppose  the  use  of  such  instruments 
as  pyrometers,  in  the  hopes  of  keeping  the  work 
more  or  less  of  a  secret.  The  more  progressive 
men  and  nearly  all  the  modern  plants,  however, 
have  a  full  complement  of  such  instruments, 
knowing  that  this  is  the  best  way  to  secure  uniform 
results. 

With  the  recording  pyrometers  in  full  sight  of 
all  the  furnace  workers,  they  can  see  exactly  what 
is  going  on  all  the  time  and  can  also  know  what 
has  happened  during  the  previous  shift.  This 
is  the  best  kind  of  educational  work,  especially 
when  someone  will  point  out  just  the  effects  of 
the  different  changes  in  temperatures  on  the 
work;  the  results  obtained  with  different  quali- 
ties of  steel;  the  variations  necessary  to  secure 
the  desired  results;  the  effects  of  different  meth- 
ods of  quenching,  can  all  be  made  interesting 
to  almost  any  type  of  worker,  if  presented  in  the 
right  way. 

The  effect  of  all  this  on  the  quality  as  well  as 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       53 

on  the  quantity  of  the  product  can  be  clearly 
pointed  out.  Its  effects  on  subsequent  opera- 
tions, if  any,  is  also  of  interest,  and  shows  how 
the  success  of  one  department,  depends  to  some 
extent  at  least,  on  other  departments. 

VALUE  OF  EXAMPLES  OF  WORK 

In  the  same  way,  the  workers  at  the  heat 
treating  furnaces  can  be  shown  how  the  previous 
annealing  and  forging  may  affect  the  quality  of 
the  work  they  do;  how  over-heating  the  steel  for 
forging  or  how  forging  it  when  too  cold,  will 
make  it  impossible  for  them  to  secure  good  results, 
at  least  by  their  regular  treatment.  If  the  work 
can  be  saved  by  special  treatment,  this  also 
affords  an  excellent  example  for  educational 
treatment  and  one  of  the  best  opportunities  for 
arousing  interest  in  the  work. 

Samples  of  the  work,  broken  to  show  fractures, 
just  as  is  done  in  test  rooms  and  in  similar  places, 
will  do  much  to  make  men  feel  that  they  are  a  real 
part  of  the  plant,  that  their  work  is  vital  and 
necessary  and  they  really  belong  to  the  " family" 
which  constitutes  the  organization. 

A  thoroughly  equipped  heat  treating  room 
affords  an  excellent  opportunity  for  trying  out  an 
experiment  of  this  kind.  It  requires  the  right 
kind  of  leadership,  which  should  come  through 


54  LABOR  TURNOVER 

the  employment  manager's  office,  but  with  this 
leadership,  it  can  be  made  attractive,  because  it 
offers  every  man  an  opportunity  to  learn  to  be  a 
better  workman  as  in  the  days  of  the  old-time 
apprenticeship.  And  if  one  department  can  be 
made  interesting,  it  will  effect  all  the  rest  and  the 
others  will  suggest  means  of  making  them  of 
interest  also. 

One  thing  is  certain,  we  cannot  hope  to  keep 
men  interested  unless  they  have  an  intelligent 
understanding  of  the  work  they  are  doing.  Igno- 
rant routine  and  interest  do  not  go  together. 

Mr.  Wolf  also  found  progress  records  of  great 
value  in  stimulating  interest  as  well  as  production. 
These  were,  however,  records  of  quality  rather 
than  quantity  and  had  a  better  effect  on  that 
account.  They  did  not  try  to  show  which  could 
do  the  most  work,  but  which  could  turn  out  the 
best. 

These  records  also  give  the  men  a  chance  to 
compare  the  quality  of  the  product  with  the 
performance  of  the  furnace,  and  to  see  at  once 
the  effect  of  irregular  heating. 

It  requires  little  imagination  to  see  how  this 
heat  treating  department  could  be  made  in- 
tensely interesting  to  any  normal  man  or  woman 
with  a  little  guidance  of  the  right  kind.  It  is, 
however,  more  difficult  in  other  departments  and 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       55 

it  is  quite  a  problem  to  know  how  to  handle 
lathe  work,  bolt  cutters  and  other  similar  work 
so  as  to  make  them  interesting.  And  yet,  this 
must  be  done  if  we  are  to  work  out  a  plan  which 
will  be  all  we  desire. 

MAKING  THE  MAN  MORE  VALUABLE 

**     .,  iTMMBlriMiFfttmi^.. 

Instruction  in  the  use  and  care  of  instruments, 
and  at  the  same  time  on  the  effect  of  temperature 
changes  on  the  work  in  hand,  must  be  done  by 
some  one  who  understands  how  to  make  such 
matters  clear  to  the  kind  of  men  we  employ  in 
these  particular  jobs.  The  instruction  cannot 
be  too  technical  in  the  beginning  and  the  work 
in  fact,  requires  considerable  tact  and  much 
skill  as  a  teacher. 

Some  may  object  to  giving  time  for  Kinder- 
garten lessons  in  heat  treatment  and  pyrometers, 
not  realizing  that  instruction  of  this  kind  may 
pay  far  better  dividends  than  to  merely  teach 
the  men  to  watch  for  red,  blue  and  white  lights. 
But  the  more  knowledge  of  the  fundamentals  of 
any  branch  of  the  industry  we  can  get  into  the 
minds  of  the  men,  the  more  intelligent  work  we 
shall  get  and  the  less  will  be  our  expense  for  labor 
turnover  and  for  unsatisfactory  work.  And, 
more  than  this,  we  shall  build  up  a  corps  of 


56  LABOR  TURNOVER 

loyal  helpers  which  is  the  greatest  asset  any 
business  can  have. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  information 
can  be  imparted  but  we  must  not  forget  that  the 
greatest  appeal  can  be  made  through  the  eye. 
Pictures,  sketches  and  diagrams  make  an  impres- 
sion which  cannot  be  had  in  any  other  way, 
especially  when  used  by  an  intelligent  and  sympa- 
thetic instructor. 

The  motion  picture  is  bound  to  become  a 
great  factor  in  all  work  of  this  kind  and  has 
already  been  used  very  successfully  in  teaching 
different  phases  of  munition  work.  Lantern 
slides  of  the  stationary  variety,  or  " stills"  as  we 
call  them  in  these  days,  can  also  be  used  to  ad- 
vantage. Both  can  be  used  to  show  operations 
and  the  way  in  which  work  and  the  pyrometers 
should  be  handled. 

It  is  not  enough,  however,  to  tell  these  facts  to  a 
boy  or  inexperienced  man  or  woman.  Care  must 
be  taken  to  see  that  they  understand  what  is 
meant  and  also  understand  the  reasons  behind  it. 

The  foreman  who  is  an  executive  with  pro- 
duction his  main  object,  is  not  the  man  to  be 
bothered  with  this.  He  seldom  has  either  the 
time  or  the  experience  to  do  the  job  as  it  must 
be  done  for  best  results.  It  requires  someone 
with  the  teaching  instinct.  The  vestibule  or 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       57 

preliminary  training  school  is  a  good  place  to 
make  a  beginning,  but  in  most  cases  the  work 
must  not  stop  there.  Not  a  week  should  go  by 
without  some  effort  being  made  to  increase  the 
knowledge  or  at  least  to  maintain  the  interest 
of  the  work. 

The  use  of  heat  indicating  and  controlling 
instruments  is  sure  to  interest  anyone  of  ordinary 
intelligence.  The  construction  of  these  instru- 
ments, the  way  in  which  they  work  and  their 
proper  care  are  also  features  which  will  not  only 
secure  interest  but  will  greatly  increase  the 
service  to  be  obtained  and  reduce  the  cost  of 
repairs.  The  mere  taking  of  an  interest  in 
the  instruments  will  be  reflected  in  the  quality 
of  the  work,  and  quantity  will  take  care  of 
itself. 

These  efforts  need  not  all  be  technical  or 
strictly  relating  to  the  individual  job.  They  can 
relate  to  the  shops  as  a  whole,  or  to  the  industry 
and  the  community. 

THE  ENGINE  LATHE 

One  great  reason  the  old-time  machinist  took 
an  interest  in  his  work,  was  because  he  understood 
it,  because  he  knew  the  "why"  of  every  machine 
in  the  shop.  One  way  to  interest  the  present- 
day  shop  man  in  his  work  is  to  see  that  he  too 


58  LABOR  TURNOVER 

knows  the  reasons  behind  the  work  he  does 
every  day.  In  other  words,  he  must  be  taught 
more  about  the  job  than  the  mere  pulling  of 
a  lever  if  he  is  expected  to  be  keenly  interested 
in  it. 

This  means  the  teaching,  in  as  simple  a  manner 
as  possible,  of  the  fundamentals  of  the  lathe, 
the  drilling  machine,  the  miller,  the  planer  and 
shaper,  and  the  grinding  machine.  It  means 
that  instead  of  being  satisfied  when  we  have 
taught  a  man  how  to  do  a  single  operation,  we 
must  show  him  why  the  various  things  must  be 
done  in  a  certain  way.  We  must,  not  merely 
tell  him  to  keep  the  center  holes  in  a  bar  clean, 
but  we  must  show  him  how  the  work  cannot 
run  true,  unless  he  does.  And  further,  we  must 
show  him  how  this  affects  the  work,  how  it  makes 
additional  work  for  the  grinder,  how  it  may  easily 
cause  the  rejection  of  a  piece,  if  the  error  is  too 
great. 

Much  of  this  can  be  taught  with  almost  no 
loss  of  productive  time,  and  it  not  only  helps 
interest  the  man,  but  it  also  makes  him  more 
available  for  other  kinds  of  work  when  occasion 
demands. 

One  of  the  important  factors  in  arousing  in- 
terest in  work  of  various  kinds,  is  to  show  the 
connection  of  each  operation  with  those  which 


SECURING  INTEREST  BY  INSTRUCTION       59 

follow    it.    In    engine    lathe    work,    there    are 
perhaps  five  stages  in  bar  work: 
Cutting  off 

Centering  and  countersinking 
Rough  turning 
Finish  turning  or  grinding 
Thread-cutting. 

Care  in  cutting  off  to  accurate  length,  helps 
all  the  succeeding  operations.  Time  lost  and 
work  spoiled  as  the  result  of  this  can  be  easily 
shown — likewise  the  time  saved  in  "good  work" 
which  goes  upon  the  right  side  of  the  ledger. 

Centering  and  countersinking  are  also  important 
and  affect  the  finished  work.  The  boy  on  the 
centering  machine  can  be  shown  the  necessity 
for  accurate  centering  and  also  the  advantage  of 
uniform  depth  of  the  countersink.  The  lathe 
hand  should  also  understand  the  importance  of 
the  lathe  centers  and  the  necessity  for  keeping 
them  clean  and  well  lubricated  with  heavy  oil  or 
white  lead.  Failure  to  keep  the  center  hole 
clean  causes  the  work  to  run  out  of  true  so  that 
it  is  slightly  eccentric  when  run  with  clean  centers. 
This  means  more  work  for  the  grinder,  if  the 
work  is  to  be  finished  by  grinding. 

If  the  grinding  allowance  is  small,  the  work 
may  fail  to  clean  up  on  one  side.  The  necessity 
of  accurate  centering  and  clean  center  holes  and 


60  LABOR  TURNOVER 

centers,  also  applies  to  finished  turning  and 
thread-cutting.  Thread-cutting  can  always  be 
made  interesting  if  the  fine  points  are  made  clear 
to  the  worker.  The  principles  of  change  gearing, 
the  depth  of  threads,  the  use  of  double  and 
triple  threads,  thread  measurement,  etc.,  can 
all  be  used  to  secure  and  maintain  interest  in 
the  work. 

These  are  merely  suggestions  which  can  be 
enlarged  to  include  most  machines  in  the  shop. 


CHAPTER  V 
INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP 

Few  of  us  realize  the  difference  between  the 
old  days  of  apprenticeship  and  the  present. 
True  the  apprentice  spent  much  more  time  than 
was  necessary  in  the  actual  learning  of  the  trade 
but  he  was  absorbing  a  fund  of  general  informa- 
tion which  showed  him  the  interesting  side  of  the 
machine  industry.  He  became  familiar  with 
many  kinds  of  work  and  learned  the  "  why  "  of  all 
the  machines  in  the  shop.  He  learned  how 
patterns  were  made  from  drawings,  how  castings 
were  made  from  patterns,  how  machine  forgings 
were  made  and  how  tools  were  forged  and 
tempered. 

Today  the  average  operator  knows  nothing 
but  his  own  machine  and  in  many  cases  is  only 
taught  how  to  put  a  certain  kind  of  work  in  the 
machine  and  perform  one  operation  on  it.  It 
has  not  been  considered  necessary  or  desirable 
to  teach  him  more  and  no  one  has  time  if  it  were. 
The  foreman  can  no  longer  be  a  teacher,  and 
this  is  perhaps  as  well  in  most  cases. 

Special  instructors  are  used  in  some  shops, 
particularly  railroad  shops,  and  these  do  re- 
el 


62  LABOR  TURNOVER 

markably  good  work  not  only  with  apprentices 
but  with  adult  operators.  This  works  well  in 
the  railroad  shop  where  the  work  is  seldom  so 
specialized  as  in  large  manufacturing  and  it 
gives  therefore  a  greater  variety  which  means 
increased  interest  on  the  part  of  the  worker. 

Some  railroad  instruction  systems  put  the 
apprentice  as  a  helper  in  the  erection  gang  with 
a  view  of  giving  him  a  general  idea  of  the  work 
first.  This  shows  him  where  the  different  parts 
belong,  shows  the  necessity  of  good  work  in 
different  places  and  makes  it  much  easier  for 
him  to  grasp  the  different  kinds  of  work  as  he 
comes  to  it. 

This  may  not  be  feasible  with  operators  hired 
for  one  specific  operation.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  as  to  the  advantage  of  giving  the  average 
man  or  woman  in  the  shop  an  opportunity  to 
know  more  of  the  product  than  they  can  see  or 
learn  on  their  own  operation.  Many  advocate 
the  teaching  of  several  operations  so  as  to  allow 
a  change  to  relieve  monotony.  Some  of  the 
large  shops,  however,  such  as  the  Packard  Motor 
Car  Co.  and  others,  have  found  that  it  pays 
to  spend  a  little  time  in  training  both  men  and 
women  before  they  go  into  the  shop  at  all,  and 
this  no  matter  what  department  they  are  to 
go  into  in  the  shop. 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  63 

The  object  of  this  training  or  vestibule  school 
is  not  only  to  make  them  somewhat  familiar 
with  the  work  they  are  to  do,  but  to  give  them  a 
sort  of  general  knowledge  of  shop  work  as  a 
background  on  which  to  build  their  special  train- 
ing. And  this  training  school  stands  ready  to 
assist  any  of  the  workers  after  they  get  out  into 
the  shop.  This  gives  the  workers  a  feeling  of 
human  interest  and  of  sympathy  which  cannot 
fail  to  have  an  effect  in  creating  interest  and 
loyalty,  which  benefits  both  the  worker  and  the 
company. 

THE  PACKARD  TRAINING  SCHOOL 

A  description  of  this  school  and  the  methods 
employed  may  be  of  service  in  suggesting  modi- 
fications to  those  who  do  not  feel  that  this  plan 
exactly  meets  their  requirements.  It  is,  however, 
well  worth  a  careful  study  as  it  has  worked  out 
very  successfully  in  this  case. 

An  extensive  study  of  the  methods  of  prelimi- 
nary training  necessary  to  fit  women  for  work 
in  the  various  departments  of  the  shop  has  been 
made  by  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Co.  of  Detroit. 
It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  state  that  the  same 
methods  are  being  used  to  train  men  of  similar 
limited  experience,  but  as  the  women  predomi- 
nated in  about  the  proportion  of  190  to  30  when 


64  LABOR  TURNOVER 

this  was  written,  it  may  well  be  called  a  training 
school  for  women.  More  men  are  now  being 
trained  in  the  same  way. 

This  school  has  been  worked  out  as  a  part  of 
the  employment-management  system  of  the 
Packard  Co.,  which  is  in  charge  of  E.  A.  Dryden, 
the  employment  manager.  The  training  school 
was  originated  by  the  general  superintendent, 
D.  G.  Stanborough,  and  is  under  the  direct  super- 
vision of  W.  J.  Hammond.  The  school  has  a 
faculty  of  50,  not  including  foremen,  assistant 
foremen  and  instructors,  and  is  giving  instruc- 
tion in  practically  every  line  of  work  done  in 
the  factory. 

One  thing  that  the  ordinary  woman  now  com- 
ing into  the  factory  does  not  realize  is  the  impor- 
tance of  time.  Everything  connected  with  quan- 
tity production  or  with  the  work  done  and  all 
operations  provided  are  regular  production  work 
that  is  run  on  the  same  premium  times  as  in 
the  factory.  This  is  done  so  that  the  students 
will  understand  the  premium  system  used  through- 
out the  factory  as  well  as  realize  that  the  ele- 
ment of  time  must  be  considered  in  everything 
they  do. 

Those  in  charge  of  the  school  have  found  by  trial 
that  the  best  results  are  obtained  on  machine 
and  assembling  work  by  having  one  instructor 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  65 

to  every  three  students  and  in  some  cases  one 
to  every  two,  although  on  the  elementary  in- 
struction one  instructor  to  every  six  seems  to 
work  satisfactorily. 

After  the  students  complete  the  elementary 
instruction  and  pass  the  examination  in  it  they 
are  furnished  with  two  one-piece  khaki  uniforms, 
which  are  charged  to  them  the  same  as  their 
tools  and  which  are  returned  to  the  company 
stockroom  upon  leaving  the  employ  of  the  com- 
pany. The  employees  may  launder  these  uni- 
forms themselves  or  turn  them  into  the  garment 
stockroom  in  exchange  for  clean  ones,  where  they 
will  be  laundered  by  the  company  at  no  expense 
to  the  student.  These  garments  are  all  kept 
in  the  work-garment  stockroom,  where  they  are 
fitted  to  the  employees  by  expert  fitters. 

The  class  of  girls  working  in  the  Packard  shops 
and  in  the  school  was  exceptionally  good,  many 
having  high-school  and  college  educations;  there 
are  also  a  goodly  number  of  schoolteachers  who 
deemed  it  then*  patriotic  duty  to  go  into  the 
factory  to  work,  thereby  releasing  men  for 
military  service. 

The  school  is  equipped  to  turn  out  120  students 
a  week  and  the  company  had  approximately 
2000  female  employees  working  throughout  its 
factory.  Each  girl  upon  completing  her  course 


66  LABOR  TURNOVER 

in  the  school  is  presented  with  a  silver  graduat- 
ing pin,  Packard  trademark,  and  the  words 
" Packard  Training  School"  on  the  pin. 

The  different  courses  taught  were  machining, 
welding,  assembling,  tool-crib  work,  clerical, 
inspecting,  bench  work,  service-repair  work, 
stockkeeping  and  stock  tracing. 

THE  STANDARD  COURSE 

The  standard  course  in  the  preliminary,  or 
vestibule,  training  school  varies  from  seven  to 
sixteen  days  according  to  the  department  to  which 
the  learners  are  to  be  transferred  for  actual  work. 
A  schedule  of  the  training  time  for  the  different 
departments  is  shown  in  Table  I. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  in  each  case  two  days 
are  devoted  to  elementary  inspection,  this  having 
been  found  to  be  the  best  way  of  getting  the 
women  accustomed  to  the  shop  surroundings 
and  the  work  to  be  done  as  well  as  teaching  the 
fundamentals  of  measuring.  This  preliminary 
work  is  accomplished  at  suitable  benches  at  one 
end  of  the  school  shop,  and  everything  is  done 
to  make  the  beginners  feel  at  ease  in  their  new 
surroundings. 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  67 

TABLE  I. — TIME  OUTLINED  FOR  STUDENTS  IN  GIRLS'  PRE- 
PARATORY SCHOOL  AND  DIFFERENT  OCCUPATIONS  TO  WHICH 
THEY  CAN  BE  TRANSFERRED 

Time 
Occupation  days 

Engine-lathe  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Engine  lathe 8 

10 

Milling-machine  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Plain  milling  machine ." .       6 

8 
Hand-screw  machine  operators 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Hand-screw  machine 7 

9 

Barber-Colman  gear-cutting  machine: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

B-C  gear-cutting  machine 7 

9 
Hand-milling  machine: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Hand-milling  machine 6 

8 
Sensitive  drill-press  operators: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Sensitive  drill  press 5 


68  LABOR  TURNOVER 

TABLE  I.— (Continued). 

Time, 
Occupation  days 

Heavy  drill  press: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Heavy  drill  press 5 

7 
Multiple  and  radial  drill: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Multiple  and  radial 6 

8 
Tapping-machine  operator : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Tapping  machine 5 

7 

Toolgrinding-machine  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Universal  grinding  machine 6 

8 
External  grinding-machine  operators: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

External  grinding  machine 5 

7 
Internal  grinding-machine  operators: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Internal  grinding  machine 5 

7 
Splining  machine  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Splining  machine 5 

7 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  69 

TABLE  L— (Continued). 

Time, 
Occupation  days 

Lo-swing  operator : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Lo-swing  lathe 7 

9 
Fox  lathe  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Fox  lathe 6 

8 
Potter  &  Johnson  operators: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Potter  &  Johnson 7 

9 
J.  &  L.  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

J.  &  L.  machine 9 

11 
Broaching  machine  operators : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Broach  machine 5 

7 
Inspection : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Practical  inspection 8 

10 
Bench  work: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Bench  work 8 

10 


70  LABOR  TURNOVER 

TABLE  I— (Concluded). 

Time, 
Occupation  days 

Major  assembling  and  dynamometer  test : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Major  assembling 7 

~9 
Minor  assembling: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Minor  assembling 6 

~8 
Welding: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Welding 14 

16 
Stock  tracers : 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Stock  tracing 6 

8 

Tool-crib  attendants: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Tool  crib _6 

~8 
Foremen  clerk: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Clerking _5 

7 
Soldering: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Soldering 5 

~7 
Stockroom  clerk: 

Elementary  inspection 2 

Premium  and  production  clerks: 

Clerking 10 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  71 

The  elementary  inspection  course  outlined  in 
Table  II,  consists  of  learning  the  use  of  measur- 
ing tools,  such  as  scales,  micrometers,  calipers, 

TABLE   II. — THE  EIGHT  STEPS  IN  TEACHING  INSPECTION 

Hours 
Inspection  Lesson  No.  1 : 

Measuring  pins  and  block  with  scale  and  marking  sizes 

on  blank  blueprint 3 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  2: 

Measuring  plate  and  holes  in  plate  with  scale  and 

calipers  and  marking  sizes  on  blank  blueprint 1% 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  3: 

Using  scale  for  measuring  plate  and  thread  pitch  gages 
and  scale  for  measuring  threaded  holes  in  plate  and 

marking  sizes  on  blank  blueprint. 1% 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  4: 

Using  scale  and  thread  pitch  gages  for  measuring 
threaded  plugs  and  marking  sizes  on  blank  blue- 
print    1% 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  5: 

Measuring  pins  with  snap  gages  and  marking  sizes  on 

blank  blueprint l^i 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  6: 

Measuring  pins  with  snap  gages  and  marking  sizes  on 

blank  blueprint 3££ 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  7: 

Measuring  bevel  gears  with  protractor,   scale  and 

calipers  and  marking  sizes  on  blank  blueprint 1H 

Inspection  Lesson  No.  8 : 

Inspecting  test  shaft  with  gages  used  on  all  previous 
inspection  points;  also  marking  all  sizes  and  notes  on 
blank  blueprint 4 

Total..  .  18 


72 


LABOR  TURNOVER 


depth  gages,  bevel  protractors,  thread-pitch 
gages,  radius  gages,  etc.,  and  the  reading  of 
blueprints.  This  is  accomplished  by  a  combina- 
tion of  blueprints  and  the  articles  themselves, 
some  of  these  being  shown  in  the  illustrations. 


WILLHINE  HOLFS- 


LENGTH  OF  PINS  AS  NUMBERED 


FIG.  1. — Teaching  use  of  scale. 

Fig.  1  shows  a  metal  block  with  nine  JHrin. 
holes  equally  spaced  and  drilled  to  a  uniform 
depth,  which  the  student  is  required  to  measure. 

LEARNING  TO  MEASURE 

Each  block  is  fitted  with  pins  of  varying  lengths, 
the  variation  being  in  even  eighths,  sixteenths, 
thirty-seconds  and  sixty-fourths.  This  lesson 
involves  only  the  use  of  the  scale,  as  the  diameter 
of  the  pins  is  not  considered,  but  only  the  various 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP 


73 


dimensions  of  the  block  and  the  length  of  the 
pin.    A  blueprint  is  provided  with  blank  spaces 


":rr 


DIAMETER  OF  HOLES  AS  NUMBERED 


FIG.  2. — Using  inside  calipers. 


I  B  H   *   P* 


Ic 


FIG.  3. — The  thread-gage  lesson. 

for  each  measurement   to   be  made,   and   this 
answers  the  double  purpose  of  making  it  easy  to 


74  LABOR  TURNOVER 

put  down  the  answers  and  to  familiarize  the  new 
student  with  blueprints  and  drawings. 

Lesson  No.  2  involves  the  use  of  the  scale  as 
before  and  also  the  inside  caliper,  as  the  dimension 
of  each  hole  is  called  for  in  the  blank  places 
shown  (see  Fig.  2).  The  use  of  thread  gages 
comes  next,  these  being  simply  for  determining 
the  lead  of  the  screw.  This  is  shown  in  Fig.  3, 


FIG.  4. — Measuring  plug  thread  gage. 

the  plate  having  four  holes  tapped  straight 
through  and  two  holes  with  a  tapered  thread. 
More  complicated  measurement  is  taken  up  in 
lesson  No.  4,  which  is  a  plug  thread  gage,  Fig.  4, 
and  on  which  six  separate  measurements  are 
taken.  A  number  of  different  thread  plug  gages 
or  plug  thread  gages  are  used  in  this  lesson,  a 
blueprint  providing  for  11  such  gages  should  it 
be  desirable  to  use  this  number. 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP 

USING  THE  MICROMETER 


75 


The  blueprints  for  lessons  5  and  6  are  shown  in 
Fig.  5.  In  addition  to  the  blueprints  there  is  a 
block  containing  10  sets  of  three  plugs  each, 
every  plug  being  numbered  and  lettered  accord- 
ing to  the  designation  shown.  The  student  here 


FIG.  5. — Measuring  with  micrometer. 

learns  to  use  the  micrometer  in  a  practical  way. 
One  of  the  plugs  of  each  set  is  the  standard  size 
for  that  set,  and  the  other  two  vary  by  a  thousandth 
of  an  inch  in  each  direction;  that  is,  one  plug  is  a 
thousandth  of  an  inch  too  small  and  the  other  a 
thousandth  too  large.  In  this  way  the  student 
learns  the  functions  of  the  micrometer  and  how 
to  use  it,  becoming  more  or  less  familiar  with  it 


76 


LABOR  TURNOVER 


in  a  comparatively  short  time.  The  instructor 
shows  how  the  instrument  is  handled  and  how 
the  measurements  are  read,  but  does  not  inform 
the  student  of  the  variations  between  the  differ- 
ent sizes  of  pins,  so  that  it  becomes  a  real  test  of 


FIG.  6. 

measurement  with  enough  repetition  to  make  her 
fairly  familiar  with  the  micrometer. 

Lesson  7  shows  the  use  of  the  bevel  protractor 
as  used  in  connection  with  bevel  gears,  and  also 
includes  the  use  of  the  scale  and  caliper,  all 
dimensions  being  marked  down  on  a  blueprint, 
Fig.  6,  as  before. 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  77 

A  COMBINATION  MEASURING  LESSON 

The  last  lesson  is  a  combination  of  all  the  others 
and  is  a  very  complicated  one  for  a  beginner,  as 
can  be  seen  from  Fig.  7.  This  is  measured  in  39 
places,  and  blanks  are  provided  on  the  blueprint 
for  each  dimension.  Included  in  this  is  the  meas- 
urement of  counterbores,  tap  holes,  beveled-gear 


FIG.  7. — Last  lesson  for  beginners. 

angles,  diameters  at  the  bottom  of  grooves  and  at 
the  outside  of  shaft  and  collar,  the  width  of  collar 
facing,  radii,  as  well  as  the  measurement  of  a 
taper  shaft  and  the  length  of  various  portions  of 
the  shaft,  which  must  check  up  with  the  over-all 
total.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  anyone  who  can 
measure  a  piece  of  this  kind  correctly  must  have 
some  understanding  of  the  use  of  the  various 
kinds  of  measuring  instruments  used  in  the  shop. 


78  LABOR  TURNOVER 

The  work  also  gives  a  fair  grasp  of  the  necessity 
of  turning  out  accurate  work  on  the  machine  and 
in  general  familiarizes  the  learner  with  some  of 
the  problems  she  will  face  when  she  begins 
production  work. 

After  the  women  have  mastered  all  the  les- 
sons of  elementary  inspection  they  are  put  at 
machines,  also  in  the  training  school,  and  given 
the  necessary  instruction  before  going  out  into 
the  shop  on  production  work.  The  average  time 
required  for  the  various  machines  is  shown  in 
Table  I,  and  it  is  gratifying  to  know  that  after 
going  into  the  shops  nearly  all  of  them  are  making 
good.  Where  special  coaching  in  certain  lines  is 
necessary  it  is  given  by  competent  and  sympa- 
thetic instructors,  and  the  foremen  throughout 
the  plant  are  cooperating  to  the  full.  The  in- 
structors in  the  training  school  are  mostly 
women  who  have  already  become  expert  opera- 
tors, some  of  these  being  shown  in  the  headpiece 
attending  a  class  in  shop  mathematics  which  is 
a  part  of  the  instructors'  course.  The  instructors 
are  also  taught  the  elements  of  mechanical  draw- 
ing so  as  to  enable  them  to  read  blueprints 
quickly  and  to  explain  them  to  the  new  students 
who  are  constantly  augmenting  the  ranks. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  sections  of  the 
training  school  is  that  devoted  to  showing  the 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  79 

learners  how  to  assemble  and  repair  Liberty 
motors.  They  take  the  engines  down,  examine 
the  various  bearings  and  other  parts,  reassemble 
them,  learn  how  to  set  the  timing  gears  for  the 
motor  and  for  the  machine  gun  and  otherwise 
to  become  familiar  with  the  motor.  They  then 
have  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  motor  run, 
this  being  proof  that  their  assembling  and  timing 
have  been  correctly  and  satisfactorily  done. 

The  atmosphere  of  the  place  is  very  pleasant, 
which  no  doubt  has  much  to  do  with  the  general 
success  of  the  school  itself. 

WOMEN  IN  GARAGE  WORK 

In  addition  to  training  women  for  the  Packard 
shops  they  were  also  successfully  utilized  in  the 
service  garages  of  some  of  the  Packard  distribu- 
ting agencies.  In  looking  after  repair  details, 
from  checking  the  cars  into  the  station  to  that 
of  seeing  that  everything  is  right  before  they  go 
out.  In  the  beginning  they  wash  and  polish  cars, 
clean  motors  and  parts,  keep  track  of  stock,  check 
out  tools  and  similar  work,  these  often  being  done 
much  neater  than  they  were  ever  done  before. 
They  are  also  being  prepared  for  heavier  repair 
work  by  brief  tutoring  or  acting  as  substitutes 
for  skilled  men.  As  a  mechanic's  helper  a  girl 
usually  becomes  capable  of  disassembling  cars 


80  LABOR  TURNOVER 

and  trucks  or  their  units  in  two  weeks'  time. 
The  oiling  and  greasing,  adjusting  and  repairing 
of  springs,  snubbers  and  shock  absorbers,  tire 
service  and  repairs,  tramming  and  adjusting 
front  wheels,  adjusting  brakes,  adjusting  valves 
and  tappets,  scraping  and  cleaning  carbon,  light 
tuning  up  of  motors  and  many  similar  tasks  are 
being  satisfactorily  mastered  in  from  one  to  three 
weeks'  instruction.  Other  repairs,  such  as  to 
upholstery  and  radiators,  are  learned  in  a  remarka- 
bly short  time. 

General  views  of  the  school  are  shown  in  the 
headpiece,  where  is  the  elementary  inspection 
room,  and  in  Figs.  8  and  9  which  show  the  mill- 
ing machines,  lathes  and  drilling  machines. 
Those  in  striped  uniform  are  instructors,  and  a 
class  of  these  is  shown  in  the  tailpiece  being 
taught  shop  mathematics  as  a  part  of  their  course. 
They  become  very  proficient  and  are  thoroughly 
interested  in  their  work. 

AN  INTENSIVE  COURSE  IN  FUNDAMENTALS 

The  shortage  of  skilled  labor  will  never  be 
successfully  overcome  until  a  foresighted  policy 
has  been  adopted  by  all  manufacturers.  In 
all  the  agitation  regarding  labor  turnover  and 
amid  all  the  accusations  regarding  the  stealing  of 
men  by  competing  employers  we  hear  very  little 


FIG.  8. — The  milling  machine  room. 


FIG.  9. — The  lathes  and  drilling  machines. 

(Facing  Page  80) 


FIG.   10. — General  view  of  school  shop. 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  81 

about  efforts  to  increase  the  supply  of  trained  labor. 
The  reaction  from  the  old  apprenticeship  days 
still  exists  in  most  places,  and  too  many  manu- 
facturers are  still  perfectly  willing  to  let  the 
other  fellow  train  his  men,  depending  upon  in- 
ducing them  to  leave  later.  There  are  of  course 
several  notable  exceptions  to  this,  but  they  have 
not  been  sufficiently  numerous  to  greatly  increase 
our  supply  of  skilled  mechanics  and  they  have 
altogether  failed  to  keep  pace  with  the  new 
demands.  The  sudden  expansion  of  the  auto- 
mobile industry  inaugurated  the  first  great 
labor-stealing  drive,  and  the  demands  of  the 
past  three  years  have  added  fresh  laurels  to  the 
record  of  unstable  labor.  But  in  spite  of  all 
the  present  needs  comparatively  few  seem  to  be 
seriously  considering  the  training  of  new  men 
instead  of  devising  ways  and  means  of  getting 
them  away  from  some  other  manufacturer. 
Needless  to  say  this  does  not  add  to  the  pro- 
ductive capacity  of  the  country,  but  actually 
decreases  it,  besides  adding  to  transportation 
and  housing  difficulties. 

Among  those  who  are  attacking  the  problem 
from  its  proper  end  and  who  see  the  necessity 
and  the  advisability  of  building  up  a  working 
force  of  their  own  is  John  C.  Spence,  superintend- 
ent of  the  Norton  Grinding  Co.,  Worcester, 


82  LABOR  TURNOVER 

Mass.  Realizing  the  scarcity  of  skilled  mechan- 
ics throughout  the  country  and  the  necessity  of 
increasing  the  supply  in  the  shortest  time,  Mr. 
Spence  some  time  ago — December,  1915,  to 
be  exact — organized  a  shop  training  school 
with  an  eight-weeks'  course,  and  it  has  proved 
so  successful  that  it  has  been  enlarged  several 
times. 

Realizing  that  the  foreman  in  the  modern  busy 
shop  has  little  time  for  instructing  green  help 
he  started  a  separate  training  school,  or  shop, 
comprising  over  6000  sq.  ft.  in  the  gallery  of 
one  of  the  buildings.  It  has  its  own  toolroom, 
wash-rooms  and  toilets,  is  entirely  separate 
from  the  rest  of  the  shop  and  contains  the 
following  equipment: 

17  lathes  3  upright  drilling  machines 

2  vertical  milling  machines  2  sensitive  drilling  machines 

3  horizontal  milling  machines  1  floor  grinding  machine 
1  hand-milling  machine  2  arbor  presses 

3  universal  grinding  machines  1  straightening  press 
1  shaping  machine  1  gas  furnace 

130  ft.  of  benches 

A  CLASS  OF  FORTY 

This  equipment  handles  40  men,  with  the 
necessary  instructors,  and  usually  graduates 
about  five  men  a  week  into  regular  shop  work. 
This  has  been  so  successful  that  over  half  of  the 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  83 

men  so  trained  have  been  hired  by  other  local 
firms,  which  is  one  of  the  best  proofs  of  their 
desirability.  Several  of  the  boys  with  only 
four  months'  training  have  been  accepted  in  the 
navy  as  second-class  machinists.  Another  prod- 
uct of  the  school  shop  is  now  foreman  of  the 
toolmakers  on  the  night  shift  and  is  one  of  the 
best  toolmakers  in  the  shop.  The  interesting 
part  is  that  prior  to  December,  1915,  he  had  no 
shop  training  whatever. 

As  fast  as  the  men  are  sufficiently  trained  they 
are  placed  in  positions  that  are  open  in  the  shop, 
each  foreman  keeping  the  school  informed  as  to 
his  needs.  This  does  not  mean  that  every  stu- 
dent serves  a  given  length  of  time  in  the  school, 
as  this  depends  upon  the  natural  aptitude  of  the 
man  or  boy  and  of  course  upon  the  kind  of  work 
to  which  he  is  best  adapted.  In  some  instances 
a  few  days  have  sufficed  to  give  the  necessary 
start,  while  on  the  other  hand  some  have  been 
kept  in  the  school  for  several  months. 

The  wages  paid  are  attractive  enough  to  secure 
a  good  class  of  learners,  and  run  from  17c.  to 
20c.  an  hour  for  boys  of  no  previous  experience 
to  35c.  an  hour  for  men  who  have  been  in  other 
lines  of  work,  such  as  driving  grocery  teams  or 
shipping  work.  Few  men  have  been  found  who 
did  not  earn  up  to  their  day  rating  after  they 


84  LABOR  TURNOVER 

got  out  into  the  shop  and  the  average  has  been 
about  lOc.  an  hour  over  this  rating  This  is 
looked  after  very  closely  to  know  how  the  cost  of 
training  works  out  and  also  to  keep  tabs  on  the 
efficiency  of  the  training  itself.  As  each  man  goes 
from  the  school  into  the  shop  notification  is  sent 
to  the  cost  department,  which  starts  a  special 
record.  This  is  maintained  for  six  months  in 
order  to  find  out  the  exact  earnings  of  these 
men  and  to  see  how  they  compare  with  skilled 
men  of  long  training  when  working  at  regular 
shop  work  and  at  piece  prices  which  have  long 
been  established.  The  fact  that  Mr.  Spence  is 
seeking  to  enlarge  his  school  speaks  volumes  for 
the  results  he  has  secured. 

The  success  of  this  plan  depends  very  largely 
in  obtaining  the  right  kind  of  teachers  and  in 
securing  cooperation  with  the  shop.  The  fore- 
man must  be  shown  that  his  work  is  not  being 
taken  away,  but  rather  that  he  is  being  relieved 
of  a  "part  of  his  duties  so  that  he  will  have  more 
time  for  that  which  will  make  him  more  valuable 
to  the  company — the  purely  executive  side  of 
the  job.  Then  too  the  student  must  be  made  to 
feel  that  the  school  is  not  simply  a  mill  to  grind 
out  as  many  men  as  possible  for  the  sole  benefit 
of  the  shop,  but  he  must  be  shown  how  it  makes 
him  much  more  valuable  to  himself  and  to  the 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  85 

% 

community.  To  prevent  the  student  becoming 
discouraged  after  getting  out  into  the  shop  the 
chief  instructor  still  continues  to  keep  in  touch 
with  him  frequently  for  several  weeks.  To  the 
new  man  this  is  a  source  of  encouragement  when 
things  do  not  go  exactly  as  he  would  like. 

THE  POINTS  To  BE  REMEMBEEED 

Mr.  Spence  sums  up  the  situation  in  the  fol- 
lowing pithy  paragraphs: 

1.  Few  men  have  the  faculty  to  teach.     Often 
the  best  workman  is  the  poorest  teacher.     Hence, 
it  is  easier  to  find  one  teacher  and  let  him  do  the 
bulk  of  this  work. 

2.  The  press  of  output  prevents  a  foreman 
from  giving  proper  attention  to  beginners  even 
if  the  foreman  happens  to  be  a  good  teacher. 

3.  It  does  not  pay  to  have  a  high-class  execu- 
tive foreman  spend  time  on  a  beginner  any  more 
than  a  professor  of  mathematics  in  a  college 
could  afford  to  put  his  time  into  first-grade  work. 
In  fact,  in  most  cases  he  would  probably  lack 
the  real  qualifications  for  first-grade  work,  i.e., 
patience  and  human  insight. 

4.  Unless  the  schooling  is  centralized  the  cor- 
poration cannot  readily  carry  out  a  fixed  policy 
with  regard  to  teachings  other  than  mechanical, 


86  LABOR  TURNOVER 

i.e.,  questions  pertaining  to  honesty  of  product, 
citizenship,  etc. 

5.  The  influence   on   the  future   attitude   of 
these  men  toward  each  other  and  toward  industry 
depends   largely   on    the    impression    made    on 
them  at  the  start.     This  should  be  controlled 
as  far  as  possible. 

6.  In    a    school    the    beginner    is    sure   of   a 
variety  of  work,  whereas  the  tendency  in  the 
shop  is  to  give  the  beginner  such  a  dose  of  what- 
ever simple  work  he  can  do  that  he  will  not  dis- 
turb the  foreman  again  for  some  time,  or  as  the 
boys  say,  enough  to  "hold  him  for  a  while." 

7.  The   training   probably   costs   less   in   the 
school   than  in  the   shop.     This  is  not  always 
clear  as  the  true  cost  in  the  shop  is  almost  always 
buried  in  departmental  expense,  but  it  is  there 
just  the  same. 

As  there  is  nothing  like  ocular  demonstration 
we  are  very  glad  to  present  a  number  of 
illustrations  from  the  training  school  in  this  shop. 
In  a  class  picture  taken  not  so  very  long  ago, 
the  ages  of  the  students  ranging  from  16  to  60 
years,  and  the  occupations  previously  followed 
vary  in  about  the  same  proportion  as  the  ages 
of  the  students  vary.  Some  of  the  occupations 
are  shown  in  detail  in  the  illustrations. 

The  businesslike  appearance  of  the  school  shop 


FIG.   12. — A  16-year  old— graduated  in  9  weeks. 


FIG.  13. — This  boy  became  a  tool  maker. 

(Following  Fig.  12) 


FIG.   14. — An  ex-plumber  who  made  good- 


(Facing  Page  87) 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  87 

is  shown  in  Figs.  10  and  11,  the  latter  showing 
assembling  work  of  various  kinds.  Six  weeks 
before  this  was  taken  the  last  man  at  the  bench 
was  running  his  own  butcher  shop,  but  the 
uncertainty  of  the  business  in  these  times  led  him 
to  leave  it  for  a  chance  to  get  into  shop  work. 

SOME  VISIBLE  PROOFS  OF  SUCCESS 

In  Fig.  12  is  a  16-year-old  boy  who  after 
spending  nine  weeks  in  the  shop  school  could 
handle  very  creditably  any  simple  machine  oper- 
ation. He  had  no  previous  experience.  Another 
bright  boy  is  seen  in  Fig.  13.  This  lad  was 
17  years  old  and  spent  eight  weeks  in  the  school, 
with  the  result  that  he  can  now  make  such  tools 
as  taper  reamers  from  start  to  finish.  Fig.  14 
shows  a  man  with  no  previous  machine  experience, 
who  had  worked  at  plumbing  and  had  driven  a 
team.  With  two  weeks'  training  in  the  school 
shop  he  was  milling  a  grinding  machine  back-rest 
body  and  can  handle  any  similar  work. 

A  more  complicated  job  is  shown  in  Fig.  15. 
The  man  doing  this  work  was  formerly  a  crane 
operator  and  spent  five  weeks  in  the  school. 
He  can  do  many  kinds  of  lathe  work,  and  after 
a  total  experience  of  10  weeks  he  was  earning 
about  45c.  an  hour.  A  similar  case  is  shown  in 
Fig.  16.  This  man  has  developed  into  a  good 


88  LABOR  TURNOVER 

turret-lathe  operator  after  eight  weeks  in  the 
school  and  earns  about  the  same  as  the  man  pre- 
viously mentioned. 

The  next  three  illustrations,  Figs.  17  to  19, 
show  three  different  types  of  work  and  men. 
The  first  of  these  men  was  a  shipping  clerk  who 
had  spent  four  weeks  in  the  school;  the  next  a 
boilermaker  who  was  in  the  school  for  seven 
weeks,  and  the  third  had  run  a  turret  lathe  on 
shell  work,  but  had  never  handled  anything 
else.  He  only  required  two  weeks  at  the  school. 

The  last  two  views,  Figs.  20  and  21,  show  men 
on  grinding  operations.  The  first  had  no  previous 
instruction  and  has  spent  five  months  in  the 
school.  He  has  however  acted  as  assistant 
instructor,  but  now  operates  a  Norton  plain 
grinding  machine  on  production  work.  Perhaps 
the  greatest  contrast  is  shown  in  Fig.  21.  As 
will  be  seen,  the  man  is  operating  a  Brown  and 
Sharpe  universal  grinding  machine,  and  this 
after  a  previous  experience  as  a  corset  designer 
and  with  only  five  weeks  at  the  school. 

COURSE  GIVES  FUNDAMENTALS 

The  notable  feature  of  this  school  as  compared 
with  most  other  short-term  schools  is  that  it  does 
not  attempt  to  make  specialists  or  operators 
of  one  type  of  machine,  but  gives  the  foundation 


FIG.   15. — Using  the  compound  rest. 


(Facing  Page  88) 


FIG.   16. — Now  a  good  turret  lathe  operator. 


FIG.  17,— Never  handled  machines  before. 

(Following  Fig,  16) 


FIG.   18. — A  change  from  his  boiler-making  job. 


FIG.   19. — A  special  shaper  job. 


(Following  Fig.  18) 


FIG.  20. — Plain  grinding  in  quantity. 


(Following  Fig.  19) 


FIG.  21. — Handling  a  Universal  grinding  machine. 

(Facing  Page  89) 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  89 

of  an  all-around  course.  It  does  not  give  the 
practice  that  the  old-fashioned  apprenticeship 
gave  in  four  to  five  years,  but  it  does  give  enough 
of  the  fundamental  knowledge  of  the  different 
types  of  machines  to  enable  a  fairly  bright  man  or 
boy  to  grasp  the  machine  operations  much  more 
readily  when  he  gets  out  into  the  shop.  It  also 
has  the  advantage  to  the  Norton  Grinding  Co. 
of  giving  it  a  supply  of  men  which  it  can  use  in 
different  departments  as  occasion  demands. 

The  time  has  gone  by  when  this  very  important 
subject  can  be  longer  neglected,  and  the  stealing 
of  men  from  other  factories  is  likely  to  be  the 
subject  of  drastic  action  in  the  very  near  future. 
It  has  become  absolutely  necessary  to  train 
men  and  women — to  increase  the  supply  rather 
than  to  waste  time  in  devising  ways  and  means 
of  luring  them  away  from  someone  else.  And 
the  time  is  probably  not  far  distant  when  training 
will  be  made  compulsory  as  was  done  in  Great 
Britain.  During  the  war  it  reached  the  point 
where  every  firm  (with  a  very  few  exceptions) 
employing  300  or  more  workers  had  to  organize 
a  portion  of  the  shop  as  a  training  school  for 
improving  the  skill  of  unskilled  workers.  Smaller 
factories  were  exempted,  but  arrangements  were 
made  with  neighborhood  technical  schools  for 
carrying  on  the  work.  This  training  had  to  be 


90  LABOR  TURNOVER 

done  whether  the  shop  had  a  sufficient  number  of 
trained  men  or  not,  so  as  to  maintain  the  supply 
of  skilled  labor  in  the  kingdom.  This  arrange- 
ment included  the  paying  of  the  worker  during 
training  on  the  same  basis  as  that  earned  before 
the  training  period.  France  had  also  made 
training  compulsory  in  all  shops,  which  empha- 
sizes the  need  for  us  to  follow  suit  so  as  to  have 
a  supply  of  workers. 

In  addition  to  these  examples  of  what  has 
been  accomplished  in  two  machine  shops  in  the 
way  of  intensive  training  we  must  not  overlook 
the  fact  that  a  great  number  of  preliminary 
training  schools  have  been  successfully  used  in 
various  lines  of  war  work.  In  addition  to  this 
C.  R.  Dooley  formerly  of  the  Westinghouse 
Company,  did  a  wonderful  work  in  the  training 
of  soldiers  at  the  various  camps  in  the  many 
trades  required  by  various  branches  of  the  army. 
These  men  were  given  intensive  courses  at  many 
different  schools  and  the  results  accomplished 
in  six  to  eight  weeks  that  we  shall  have  to  revise 
our  ideas  of  the  time  required  to  give  fundamen- 
tal knowledge  concerning  the  machine  and 
other  trades. 

This  work  emphasizes  the  fact  that  there  is  no 
excuse  for  us  to  ever  again  have  a  shortage  of 
men  skilled  in  various  trades,  as  long  as  we  have 


INSTRUCTION  IN  THE  SHOP  91 

man  power  available.  We  have  added  much  to 
our  productive  capacity  and  we  can  add  more 
each  year  by  systematically  training  men  and 
women  in  the  different  trades.  Every  shop  and 
every  community  must  do  its  share  and  we 
shall  do  away  with  the  cry  of  labor  stealing  while 
at  the  same  time  we  will  increase  the  productive 
capacity  of  our  shops  in  various  lines  of  work. 


CHAPTER  VI 
NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES 

To  show  the  kind  of  work  which  has  been  done 
by  Robert  B.  Wolf,  to  whom  reference  has 
already  been  made,  the  following  liberal  extracts 
are  made  from  a  paper  presented  by  him  to  the 
American  Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers  in 
December,  1918.  Mr  Wolf  is  a  member  of  this 
society  and  is  also  manager  of  the  Spanish  River 
Pulp  &  Paper  Mills,  Ltd.  In  his  talk  before  the 
Babson  Conference  Mr.  Wolf  advocated  making 
the  men  familiar  with  the  cost  of  the  various 
operations,  as  it  creates  a  desire  to  produce  more 
material,  and  this  is  of  even  more  importance 
than  the  quality  of  the  equipment. 

Another  interesting  feature  of  these  records 
has  been  to  bring  the  efficiency  of  the  poorer  men 
up  to  that  of  the  best,  the  accomplishment  of 
which  has  done  much  to  simplify  the  standardiz- 
ing of  wages  on  such  classes  of  work.  This  has 
not  been  done  by  lowering  the  production  of  the 
best  men,  but  by  bringing  all  the  others  up  to 
their  level. 

92 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  93 

Mr.  Wolf  is  a  great  believer  in  democracy  in 
the  shop,  and  finds  that  by  giving  the  men  the 
opportunity  to  exercise  their  minds  in  the  right 
direction  and  aiding  them  in  every  possible  way 
a  great  increase  in  efficiency  is  secured.  His 
experience  has  been  that  it  is  better  to  utilize  the 
men's  brains  in  this  respect  than  to  have  them 
exercise  them  in  finding  ways  of  beating  the  boss. 

An  interesting  phase  of  Mr.  Wolf's  talk  was 
that  while  the  plant  at  Berlin  was  non-union  the 
three  large  ones  in  Canada  were  completely 
unionized  organizations,  and  he  found  no  trouble 
whatever  in  introducing  the  same  method  and 
securing  the  same  cooperation  and  efficiency. 
He  simply  had  to  explain  his  proposed  plan  to 
the  organization  leaders  and  to  the  men  them- 
selves to  point  out  the  advantages  to  all  con- 
cerned, after  which  he  experienced  no  difficulty 
in  securing  their  cooperation.  He  finds  that  all 
men  are  human  and  that  they  will  respond  if 
they  are  treated  right  and  convinced  of  a  square 
deal. 

The  A.  S.  M.  E.  paper  follows: 

1 '  The  basis  of  all  'non-financial  incentives '  is  interest  in 
work.  Interest  in  work  implies  a  desire  to  produce  actuated 
by  internal  motives  rather  than  external  discipline. 

"Production  means  creation  and  the  industrial  creative 
function  in  man  is  a  mental  process  and  lies  in  his  intelli- 


94  LABOR  TURNOVER 

gent  adaptation  of  means  to  ends.  It  is  useless,  therefore, 
to  look  for  real  creative  work  unless  the  workman  has  a 
chance  to  think  and  to  plan;  any  other  working  environment 
either  fails  to  attract  or  actually  repels  the  workman,  and  as 
a  consequence  offers  no  incentive  to  increased  effort. 

"Work  which  does  not  call  for  thoughtful  reflection,  and 
which  uses  only  muscular  effort,  tends  to  draw  man  down 
to  the  level  of  the  brute  and  makes  for  industrial  irre- 
sponsibility and  consequent  social  disorganization.  The 
unthinking  man  cannot  be  a  responsible  man. 

''It  is  the  self-conscious  faculty  of  man  which  distin- 
guishes him  from  the  animal  and  makes  him  above  all  a 
creative  center  through  which  the  universal  life  giving  power 
can  deal  with  a  particular  situation  in  time  and  space. 

"To  use  a  homely  illustration  with  which  every  one  is 
familiar — the  traffic  at  each  crowded  street  crossing  cannot 
be  regulated  from  the  City  Hall;  it  requires  an  individual 
(the  traffic  policeman)  in  the  congested  spot  to  deal  with 
each  particular  situation  as  it  arises,  and  upon  his  powers  of 
observation  and  selection  depends  the  orderly  flow  of  traffic. 

"It  is  only  through  the  individual  life  that  the  universal 
life  can  act  and  therefore  the  universal  is  compelled  to 
evolve  many  individual  lives  if  organization  and  order  is  to 
replace  the  unorganized  state  represented  by  the  purely 
generic  operation  of  natural  law. 

"The  problem  of  social  organization  is,  then,  how  to 
organize  society  upon  the  basis  of  respect  for  the  individual. 
This  is  also  the  industrial  problem  as  well,  for  industry  in 
the  broadest  sense  is  society  in  its  highest  form  of  activity 
because  it  is  essentially  constructive  and  therefore  creative 
activity. 

"It  was  an  inevitable  corollary  to  the  universal  plan  of 
creation  that  the  individual  life  came  into  being  not  to 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  95 

create  material  substance  as  that  had  to  be  before  individual 
life  could  gain  consciousness.  The  function  of  the  indi- 
vidual life,  however,  is  to  create  by  a  thought  process  con- 
ditions especially  selected  to  produce  results  which  nature 
unaided  would  fail  to  produce. 

CONFORMING  TO  NATURAL  LAW 

This  is  what  the  horticulturist  does.  His  power  lies  in 
his  knowledge  of  natural  law  and  his  creations  are  made 
possible  because  he  conforms  to  the  law.  The  uncultivated 
orchard  reverts  to  its  original  wild  state  when  no  longer 
attended  by  man  but  increases  in  productiveness  by  con- 
tinued thoughtful  application  of  man's  power  of  selection 
and  adaptation. 

"It  is  by  a  similar  process  of  conscious  selection  that  such 
devices  as  the  steamboat,  steam  engine,  electric  generator, 
and  the  telephone  came  into  existence.  They  did  not  come 
into  being  and  never  would  have  been  created  by  the  generic 
operation  of  nature's  laws. 

"To  illustrate  further:  the  desire  of  the  savage  to  cross  a 
body  of  water  too  wide  for  him  to  swim  caused  him  to  ob- 
serve the  floating  of  things  which  floated  naturally.  As  a 
result  of  this  observation  he  built  a  raft;  and  finally,  by 
further  observation,  he  discovered  the  principle  that  any 
thing  which,  bulk  for  bulk,  was  lighter  than  the  water  it 
displaced  would  float,  and  although  he  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously applied  this  principle,  it  is  true  that  from  its  appli- 
cation he  evolved  the  canoe. 

"Upon  a  higher  plane,  the  modern  electric  generator 
was  evolved  by  observing  that  a  wire  passed  at  right  angles 
through  a  magnetic  field  would  induce  an  electric  current  to 
flow  through  it  in  a  certain  direction. 


96  LABOR  TURNOVER 

"It  was  only  by  creating,  through  the  application  of  the 
personal  factor,  conditions  by  which  this  law  could  be  ex- 
panded that  electricity  was  generated  commercially.  The 
electric  generator  is  nothing  more  than  a  large  number  of 
such  wires,  insulated  one  from  another,  passing  in  and  out 
of  a  number  of  magnetic  fields,  plus  a  device  for  collecting 
and  conducting  away  the  current  generated.  The  im- 
portant point  to  remember  is  that  there  never  would  have 
been  an  electric  generator  without  the  introduction  of  the 
individual  personalities  who  literally  created  it. 

"In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  observe  that  all  of  our 
creations,  if  they  are  to  be  successful,  depend  upon  the 
strict  observance  of  the  laws  of  nature.  When  we  clearly 
see  man's  place  in  the  universal  life  movement  we  can  under- 
stand why  it  was  that  in  the  long  process  of  evolution  it 
was  inevitable  that  a  being  capable  of  measuring  by  re- 
flection be  evolved.  The  very  word  "man"  is  derived  from 
an  Arian  root  meaning  to  measure. 

"All  this  may  seem  at  first  sight  far  removed  from  the 
problem  of  'non-financial  incentives/  but  it  seems  to  me  it 
is  necessary  before  proceeding  further  to  gain  some  concep- 
tion of  the  reason  for  man's  existence.  The  concrete  illus- 
trations of  the  operations  of  non-financial  incentives  will 
then  have  greater  meaning. 

"Man,  through  the  exercise  of  his  intellectual  faculties  so 
laboriously  acquired  through  ages  of  slow  evolution,  liter- 
ally reflects  the  universal  creative  process  upon  the  plane 
of  the  particular.  There  can  be  no  organization  of  material 
substance  except  through  an  individual  who  can  observe 
the  laws  inherent  in  the  materials  themselves.  Then,  by  a 
process  of  reflection,  these  materials  can  be  organized  into 
forms  which  they  could  not  take  unaided  by  the  individual 
will  or  a  power  external  to  themselves. 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  97 

"To  state  the  matter  more  concretely:  man,  we  know, 
cannot  bring  matter  into  existence,  neither  can  he  create  the 
force  which  resides  in  the  physical  elements  he  uses  in  the 
day's  work;  what  he  does  is  to  observe  nature's  forces  in 
action  and  then,  having  learned  the  laws,  i.e.,  the  reasons  for 
their  action  in  any  particular  direction,  he  seeks  for  means 
to  make  them  express  themselves  more  fully. 

"This,  of  course,  necessitates  the  creation  of  conditions 
which  do  not  occur  spontaneously  in  nature.  We  have  here 
the  beginning  of  what  we  call  the  artificial  and  it  is  signifi- 
cant that  the  highest  type  of  this  form  of  creation,  upon 
a  higher  plane  than  the  natural,  is  termed  art. 

"This  creation  of  artificial  conditions,  which,  taken  all  to- 
gether, we  call  civilization,  is,  of  course,  the  product  of  man's 
organizing  power.  While  self-consciousness,  the  power  of 
realizing  the  self  as  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  universe, 
has  been  a  human  faculty  for  untold  ages  before  the  present 
highly  organized  state  of  society  had  been  attained,  it  is 
nevertheless  true  that  now,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history 
of  the  white  race,  we  are  confronted  with  the  problem 
of  correcting  the  repressive  or  selfish  character  of  civiliza- 
tion so  that  it  will  serve  the  mass  of  humanity.  If  we  fail 
to  accomplish  this  it  will  be  destroyed  by  the  same  creative 
power  which  brought  it  into  existence. 

MAKE  ENVIRONMENT  ATTRACTIVE 

"  We  must  leanrhow  to  change  the  industrial  environment    \ 
from  one  which  repels  mankind  to  one  which  attracts.    In 
other  words,  the  incentive  to  work  must  be  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  the  work  itself. 

"  Now  what  are  the  conditions  which  we  must  meet  in  the 
industrial  world  to  make  work  attractive?  We  have  ample 
evidence  that  increasing  financial  returns  have  failed  to 

7 


98  LABOR  TURNOVER 

stimulate  productivity  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  constant 
demand  for  shorter  hours  and  the  increasing  labor  turnover 
is  proof  that  work  in  most  of  our  industries  not  only  does 
not  attract  but  actually  repels  the  workman.  We  must, 
therefore,  look  into  the  working  conditions  themselves  for 
the  answer.  This  is  the  only  scientific  method  of  procedure. 
"I  would  like  to  quote  from  a  letter  which  was  received 
from  a  very  intelligent  labor  leader  recently,  to  show  how 
the  mass  of  employees  look  at  the  problem  and  how  urgent 
is  the  need  for  its  immediate  solution  if  we  are  not  to  have 
a  greatly  reduced  production  of  the  necessities  of  life 
brought  about  by  the  concerted  action  of  the  workers — 

Is  it  not  true  that  the  industrial  evolution  which  has  brought 
the  trusts  into  existence  has  been  the  means  of  eliminating  the 
"human  touch"  in  industry?  During  the  days  of  small  indus- 
trial plants^  the  employer  and  the  employee,  of  course,  were 
really  fellow-workmen.  At  the  present  time,  however,  the 
employee  has  perhaps  never  seen  any  of  the  stockholders  of 
the  industrial  plant  where  he  is  employed. 

You  say  that:  Men  can  be  productive  only  when  they  take 
an  interest  in  their  work  and  they  will  not  take  this  interest 
unless  those  entrusted  with  the  direction  of  their  efforts  realize 
that  they  must  teach  them  constantly  how  to  exercise  their 
creative  powers. 

While  I  agree  with  everything  you  say  relative  to  creative 
work  and  have  thought  along  these  lines  considerably  myself, 
still,  is  it  possible  in  industries,  as  they  are  constituted  at  pres- 
ent, to  enable  the  average  workingman  to  do  creative  work? 
Isn't  it  true  that  industry  is  becoming  so  specialized  that 
the  workman  is  no  longer  a  creator?  I  realize  that  while  it 
may  still  be  possible  for  the  workman  doing  certain  jobs  in  the 
mill  to  do  creative  work,  to  a  certain  extent,  still  isn't  the  tend- 
ency of  modern  industry  more  and  more  toward  making  the 
workman  simply  an  appendage  of  the  machine? 

In  the  paper  you  sent  me,  you  described  how  you  designed  a 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  99 

plan  for  the  men  operating  the  hydraulic  press  to  take  an  in- 
terest in  their  work.  This  certainly  is  a  practical  illustration 
of  what  can  be  done,  and  perhaps  could  be  cited  as  a  refuta- 
tion of  what  I  have  just  written  above.  I  realize  that  there 
may  be  certain  jobs  in  the  mill  where  the  creative  powers  can 
still  be  allowed  to  develop,  and  that  the  workman  may  be  given 
a  chance  to  express  his  individuality,  but  the  point  I  am  trying 
to  bring  out  is  that  the  tendency  of  modern  industry  is  away 
from  creative  efforts  and  gives  the  workman  less  and  less 
opportunity  for  individual  development. 

EFFECT  OF  MONOTONY 

When  I  worked  in  the  factories,  which  I  did  from  the  age  of 
12  to  25,  one  of  the  things  I  found  the  most  dissatisfaction  with 
was  the  deadening  sameness  of  the  work.  I  never  remember  a 
time,  when  working  in  the  factories,  that  I  became  so  interested 
in  my  work  that  I  did  not  long  for  quitting  time  to  come. 

After  leaving  the  factory  work  I  got  a  job  with  a  building 
contractor.  As  I  became  more  proficient  as  a  carpenter,  I 
have  time  and  again  been  put  doing  certain  work  that  was  more 
or  less  creative,  in  which  I  have  become  so  interested  that 
I  paid  no  attention  to  quitting  time  and  have  worked  for 
two  or  three  hours  after  the  time  when  I  might  have  quit  work. 
There  is  joy  in  creative  work.  But,  in  my  opinion,  no  matter 
what  schemes  we  will  try  to  devise,  modern  industry  is  going  to 
tend  more  and  more  to  make  simply  automatons  of  men. 

I  may  say,  however,  that  I  could  find  very  little  to  criticize 
in  either  of  your  articles.  You  have  demonstrated,  from 
practical  experiments,  things  that  I  have  often  theorized  about. 
The  conflict  in  industry  during  the  next  few  years,  in  my  opin- 
ion, will  be  between  the  democratic  and  autocratic  ideas.  The 
autocratic  idea,  I  think,  is  best  exemplified  by  the  German 
military  machine. 

"I  was  able  to  convince  the  writer  of  the  letter  from  which 
I  have  just  quoted  that  creative  work  could  be  done  to  a 


100  LABOR  TURNOVER 

great  extent  in  modern  industry,  and,  further,  that  this 
could  be  accomplished,  without  any  radical  changes  in 
equipment,  greatly  to  the  advantage  of  both  employer  and 
employee. 

INDIVIDUAL  PROGRESS  RECORDS 

"To  do  this,  individual  progress  records  are  necessary  so 
that  the  workman  can  know  from  day  to  day  how  he  is 
improving  in  the  mastery  of  the  process. 

"The  first  example  is  from  that  branch  of  the  wood- 
pulp  industry  known  as  the  sulphite  process  and  shows 
a  cooking  chart  which  was  designed  to  give  the  cook  in- 
formation about  the  reactions  in  the  digesters  in  which  the 
wood  chips  are  cooked  in  a  6  per  cent,  solution  of  sulphurous 
acid  partly  combined  with  a  lime  base. 

"The  skill  in  cooking  consists  in  the  proper  control  of  the 
relief  valve. 

"Before  the  introduction  of  these  cooking  charts,  all 
this  was  left  to  the  unaided  judgment  of  the  cook  with 
usually  nothing  to  help  him  but  a  small  hand  thermometer 
and  a  pressure  gage.  Of  course,  great  variation  in  the 
pulp  was  the  result.  The  cooking  charts,  plotted  by  the 
cooks  themselves,  however,  helped  greatly  as  they  enabled 
the  quick  visualization  of  the  work. 

'  'Immediately  after  the  introduction  of  these  charts  a 
very  marked  increase  in  the  uniformity  of  the  pulp  was 
noticed,  and  the  cooks,  while  at  first  opposed  to  the  new 
method  of  "cooking  with  a  lead  pencil"  as  they  called  it, 
soon  learned  to  like  their  work  much  better  for  the  reason 
that  they  now  had  some  way  of  visualizing  the  work  in  its 
entirety.  In  addition  to  more  uniform  quality  of  the  pulp, 
the  yield  from  a  cord  of  wood  increased  something  over  5 
per  cent. 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  101 

CoNTINUOUi  PROGRESS  RECORD 

"We  soon  found  that  it  was  necessary  to  give  some  sort 
of  continuous-progress  record  if  we  were  to  keep  up  the 
interest  in  the  work,  because  no  man  could  carry  in  his  mind 
anything  but  a  general  impression  of  his  progress  from  day  to 
day.  Progress  records  measure  the  man's  increasing 
mastery  of  his  work,  and  we  feel  that  it  is  one  of  the  moral 
obligations  of  the  management  to  keep  such  records  for  the 
individual  workman.  Without  these  records  men  will  not 
think  of  improvements  in  the  process  and  they  cannot  be 
blamed  for  becoming  indifferent.  How  long,  for  instance, 
would  a  superintendent  or  manager  retain  his  interest  in  the 
economical  operation  of  his  plant  if  his  cost  sheets  were 
withheld?  We,  as  executives,  must  have  quantity,  quality, 
and  economy  records,  otherwise  our  interest  soon  lags. 
Why,  then,  should  we  expect  the  workman  to  be  interested 
when  he  is  not  furnished  with  a  record  which  at  least  re- 
flects one  of  these  elements? 

"Such  records  can  be  grouped,  under  three  main  headings: 
quantity  records,  quality  records  and  economy  or  cost 
records.  Quality  records,  which  occupy  the  middle  position, 
are,  perhaps,  of  the  greatest  importance  for  they  bring  the 
individual's  intelligence  to  bear  upon  the  problem  and  as  a 
consequence,  by  removing  the  obstacles  to  uniformity  of 
quality,  remove  at  the  same  time  the  obstructions  to  in- 
creased output.  The  creative  power  of  the  human  mind  is, 
however,  not  content  simply  to  produce  the  best  quality 
under  existing  conditions  of  plant  operation.  The  desire 
to  create  new  conditions  for  the  more  highly  specialized 
working  out  of  the  natural  laws  of  the  process,  demands 
expression  and  this  expression  at  once  takes  the  form  of 
suggestions  for  improvements  in  mechanical  devices. 


102  LABOR  'lUR'NOVER 

"This  desire  contains  within  it  the  germ  of  economic 
thought  which  will  unfold  and  express  itself  eventually  in  a 
request  for  cost  records,  and  the  organization  that  neglects 
its  opportunity  to  satisfy  this  desire  is  overlooking  one  of  the 
great  avenues  leading  toward  intelligent  productive  effort. 

"Because  of  the  interrelation  of  quality,  quantity  and 
economy  records,  any  complete  record  of  individual  prog- 
ress must,  of  course,  take  them  all  into  account.  However, 
as  this  is  not  always  practical  we  have  at  least  one  of  three 
ways  of  measuring  progress  always  open  to  us. 

PROGRESS  RECORDS 

"We  keep  a  continuous-progress  record  of  the  work  which 
is  mainly  one  of  quality.  Most  of  our  records  refer  to  the 
quality  of  the  work  performed;  in  other  words,  the  nearness 
to  which  the  workman  approaches  the  ideal  standards 
which  he  has  helped  to  form.  The  democratic  cooperative 
forming  of  these  standards  by  the  joint  work  of  the  trained 
technician  and  the  practical  workman  is  absolutely  essential, 
otherwise  continuous  progress  will  not  be  made.  The 
whole  plan  must  be  really  educational  in  nature  and  to  be  so 
the  records  must  record  the  natural  laws  of  the  process  and 
the  individual's  degree  of  control  of  forces  in  the  material 
elements  that  he  is  using.  The  more  factors  that  can  be 
recorded,  the  greater  the  interest  in  the  work.  The  reason 
for  this  is  obvious. 

"Suppose  there  are  nine  men  cooking.  These  men  are 
posted  in  the  order  of  seniority,  with  the  highest  monthly 
record  on  top.  There  are  three  foremen  at  the  top  of  the 
record.  Each  of  these  foremen  has  three  cooks  under  him 
and  their  standing  is  made  up  by  taking  the  average  records 
of  the  men  under  them.  In  this  way  we  are  enabled  to  get 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  103 

not  only  the  individual  records  of  the  men,  but  the  group,  or 
team-work  records,  as  well. 

"The  temperature  record  is  obtained  by  taking  half- 
hourly  readings  from  the  recording-thermometer  chart, 
upon  which  a  standard  temperature  curve  has  been  plotted, 
calling  each  reading  which  happens  to  fall  on  the  standard 
line  100,  and  a  reading  20  deg.  either  side  of  the  standard  line 
0.  This  means  that  for  each  degree  off  of  the  standard, 
5  points  are  deducted  from  the  progress  record. 

"The  time  record  is  obtained  by  calling  a  certain  time  of 
cooking  100  and  taking  off  on  each  digester  cooked  one  point 
for  each  minute  above  or  below  this  standard. 

"The  blowing  record  is  obtained  by  calling  30  Ib.  pressure 
100  (most  of  the  cooking  being  done  at  a  pressure  of  75  Ib. 
per  sq.  in.)  and  60  Ib.  0,  the  idea  being  to  get  the  pressure  as 
low  as  possible  before  blowing  the  digester. 

"By  an  arrangement  of  this  sort,  by  simply  changing  the 
relative  value  of  the  different  factors,  it  is  possible  to  empha- 
size any  particular  phase  of  the  work.  The  men  willingly 
pay  the  greatest  attention  to  the  factor  that  has  the  greatest 
value  because  it  gives  them  the  better  record  and  because 
they  know  the  reason  for  the  change.  For  instance,  if  it  is 
desired  to  emphasize  quantity,  we  give  a  larger  value  to  the 
time  record  and  a  lesser  value  to  the  temperature  record. 
Production  is  then  somewhat  increased  at  the  expense  of 
quality. 

"I  could  give  many  illustrations  similar  to  the  one  just 
given  of  our  cooking  operations.  I  will  give  only  one  final 
illustration  of  how  economy  progress  records  meet  with 
equally  great  response.  In  the  plant  where  this  system  was 
developed  were  employed  over  1200  men  and  perhaps  half 
of  these  men  had  individual  progress  records  and  the  rest 
came  under  some  sort  of  group-progress  record.  Invariably 


104 


LABOR  TURNOVER 


the  records  proved  themselves  to  be  an  incentive  to  greater 
productivity. 

COST  RECORDS  OF  WORK 

"In  Fig.  22  is  shown  a  foreman's  detail  job  sheet  which 
indicates  the  method  for  giving  our  maintenance  foremen 


FORMAN'S  DETAIL  JOB  SHEET. 


Name  of  Job  In&att  2-35  Hp.  Motors  on  Coarse  Screen* 


Electrical  Dept  -  Porrtr  Wring. 


Worked < 


Labor  Cost-to  Date_ 
MaterialCoffrtoOate 
Total  Cost  to  Dote  __ 


labor  Coat  Yesterday  _ 
Material  Co&t  Yesterday 

Total  Cost  Yesterday 


750 


1.21 


DETAIL  OF  MATERIAL.  USED  YESTERDAY. 


ITEMS. 


t " »  *Lpnq-  Turn  Elbows, 
4%  it.  Solder, 
4-ti'Tupt  E  Condule-rs. 
4-l(*4Holt  Porcelain*. 
I  Roll  Oiled  Lined, 
l-ffoll  Friction  Tape, 
G-IW  Amp.  TSrmlnafg, 


0.61 
A?3. 
2.02 


FIG.  22. — Foreman's  job  sheet. 

cost  records  of  their  work.  It  is  obviously  a  difficult  matter 
when  dealing  with  maintenance  and  construction  work  to 
give  quality  or  quantity  records  as  the  work  varies  so  much 
from  day  to  day,  so  the  only  kind  of  records  we  could  give 
the  men  were  records  of  cost.  The  original  suggestion  to 
give  these  records  grew  out  of  the  fact  that  we  gave  to  each 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  105 

operating  department  head  a  complete  cost  of  operating  his 
department  for  which  he  was  held  responsible. 

"As  soon  as  he  began  to  realize  this  responsibility, 
because  all  the  repair  materials  were  charged  to  him,  he  at 
once  began  to  make  intelligent  criticism  of  the  engineering 
department,  and  especially  was  he  critical  of  the  mainte- 
nance foreman  if  he  was  wasteful  in  the  use  of  materials. 
As  a  result  of  this,  the  maintenance  foremen  asked  the 
master  mechanic  if  they  could  not  have  job  costs  showing 
how  economically  they  were  doing  their  work  as  they  had 
no  idea  of  the  value  of  materials  that  they  were  using. 
The  foreman's  detail  job  sheet  shown  is  the  result  of  this 
request.  It  will  be  noted  that  the  job  is  fully  described, 
the  total  cost  for  labor  and  material  to  date  is  given, 
as  well  as  the  cost  of  labor  and  material  for  yesterday. 
Then  below  is  listed  the  itemized  cost  of  all  materials  used. 

"The  men  soon  became  educated  as  to  the  value  of  the 
materials  they  were  using  and  we  noticed  a  great  change  in 
the  amount  of  waste;  in  fact,  we  had  frequent  cases  where 
maintenance  foremen  would  bring  scales  into  the  mill  to 
make  sure  that  the  storehouse  was  giving  them  full  measure 
of  materials  and  we  were  soon  obliged  to  get  up  a  system  of 
giving  credit  for  material  returned  to  the  storehouse  in 
order  to  help  foremen  keep  down  their  job  costs.  This  was 
in  no  sense  a  form  of  contract  system,  for  all  of  our  main- 
tenance and  construction  men  were  paid  by  the  hour  and  did 
not  receive  any  more  money  for  doing  a  job  economically. 

"The  concrete  results  obtained  by  giving  the  cost  sheets 
to  the  department  heads  and  job  costs  to  the  maintenance 
foremen. 

"  In  none  of  this  work  did  we  pay  bonuses  to  a  superin- 
tendent, department  head  or  workman;  our  salaries  and 


106  LABOR  TURNOVER 

wages  were  high,  but  payments  were  all  on  a  monthly, 
weekly,  or  hourly  basis.  The  increased  effort  therefore 
came  entirely  from  a  desire  within  the  individual  to  be 
productive.  This  sort  of  creative  effort  produced  great 
changes  in  operating  conditions;  we  increased  our  yearly 
production  from  42,000  tons  to  111,000  tons  without  adding 
to  the  number  of  digesters  for  cooking  the  pulp,  or  wet 
machines  for  handling  the  finished  product  and  we  changed 
our  quality  from  the  poorest  to  the  very  best. 

VALUABLE  SUGGESTIONS  FROM  MEN 

"Due  to  the  intelligent  suggestion  which  came  from  our 
men  all  over  the  plant  we  were  able  to  make  very  radical 
changes  in  the  manufacturing  processes.  Entirely  new 
methods  of  preparing  our  wood,  making  acid,  bleaching,  etc., 
were  created,  all  of  which  we  paid  for  out  of  the  earnings. 

"I  maintain  that  this  was  all  the  result  of  the  freedom 
our  men  were  experiencing  because  they  were  working  in  an 
environment  which  stimulated  thinking.  They  had  ample 
opportunity  constantly  to  increase  their  knowledge  of  the 
underlying  natural  laws  of  the  process,  and  were  therefore 
able  to  realize  the  joy  which  comes  from  a  conscious  mastery 
of  their  part  of  the  process. 

"This  freedom  to  express  one's  individuality  in  construct- 
ive work  according  to  law,  is  the  only  real  freedom,  for 
freedom  unrestrained  by  a  consciousness  of  the  universality 
of  natural  law  leads  to  anarchy. 

"We  should  never  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  the  degree 
of  conscious  self-expression  which  the  workman  can  attain 
is  in  direct  proportion  to  the  ability  of  the  organization  to 
measure,  for  his  benefit,  the  impress  of  his  personality  upon 
it.  The  most  democratic  industrial  plant  therefore  is  the 
one  which  permits  the  fullest  possible  amount  of  individual 


NON-FINANCIAL  INCENTIVES  107 

freedom  to  each  member,  irrespective  of  his  position  and  at 
the  same  time  is  so  sensitively  adjusted  that  it  reflects 
immediately  the  effects  of  his  actions.  If  his  actions  result 
in  injury  to  others  he  will  see  that  as  a  part  of  the  whole  he, 
himself,  must  also  suffer. 

"Man  is  not  an  animal,  but  a  free  self-determining  mental 
center  of  consciousness  whose  reason  for  existence  is  that  the 
universal  life  can  deal  with  a  particular  situation  in  time  and 
space,  and,  by  this  means,  be  enabled  to  evolve  a  material 
universe  organized  to  express  the  one  great  individual  life 
of  which  we  are  all  a  part. 

"In  conclusion  let  me  say  that  I  am  well  aware  that  to 
some  of  you  this  may  seem  like  pure  philosophical  specula- 
tion far  removed  from  the  practical  affairs  of  every  day  life. 
I  have  said  nothing  however  that  I  cannot  back  up  by  any 
number  of  additional  illustrations  and  my  hope  is  that  the 
examples  given  will  stimulate  others  to  make  similar  in- 
vestigations, so  that  we  can  fulfill  our  mission  in  this  country 
by  evolving  an  industrial  philosophy  which  will  have  for  its 
ultimate  aim  the  continuous  unfoldment  of  the  latent  powers 
in  man. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER 

One  of  the  results  of  the  changing  attitude 
regarding  the  importance  of  labor  and  the  part 
which  it  plays  in  economical  production,  is  the 
increased  importance  of  the  employment  mana- 
ger. For  it  is  coming  to  be  recognized  that  the 
proper  selection  of  workers,  the  placing  of  them 
in  their  proper  position  in  the  shop,  the  pre- 
vention of  personal  grudges  against  individuals, 
the  retention  of  workers  as  long  as  it  is  mutu- 
ally advantageous,  play  a  much  greater  part  in 
economical  production  than  we  formerly  realized. 

The  best  results  require  a  man  or  woman  of 
broad  judgment,  of  sympathetic  understanding,  of 
tact  in  dealing  with  people  of  various  kinds  and 
other  qualities  which  tend  to  promote  harmony 
all  through  the  plant.  The  employment  manager 
of  the  future  will  probably  handle  what  we 
formerly  called  welfare  work  as  well  as  commu- 
nity relations,  in  addition  to  the  work  of  "  hiring 
and  firing,"  as  it  is  commonly  called. 

108 


THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER 


109 


Perhaps  the  qualifications  for  such  an  employ- 
ment manager  can  be  better  described  by  quot- 
ing Philip  Brasher,  himself  an  employment 
manager  of  wide  experience  and  at  present  with 


EMPLOYMENT 

COURTEOUS  RECEPTION 
PERSONAL  INTERVIEW 
PROPER  NOTIFICATION 
FAIR    INTRODUCTION 

i 

1 

1 

PERSONAL  QUALIFICATIONS 
EXPERIENCE 
EDUCATION 

HEALTH 
PERSONALITY 
ABILITY 
•CHARACTER 

REMUNERATION 

SALARY              MINIMUM  KATE 
WEEKLY  RATE       PROFTT  SHARING 
CAY  RATE            CO-OPERATIVE 
PIECE  RATE              BUYIN6 
BONUS                  SAVINGS  PLAN 

SUPERVISION 

HARMONY 
RTSPONSIBIUTY 
STEADY  EMPLOY- 
MENT 

1 

. 

| 

ENVIRONMENT 

MINIMUM  INTERFERENCE 
CONGENIAL  ASSOCIATES 
CHEERFUL  SURROUNDINGS 

EQUIPMENT 

SPACE.                 MEN 
MACHINES      TOOLS 

PROTECTION 

FIRE                    PERSONAL- 

1 

1 

EDUCATION 

^&^s^N 

"SSffi&ggr 

UBRAR^CTURCSHARTS 

RECREATION 

ROOMS 
ATHLETICS     ASSOCIATIONS 

VBt&s&amh 

DINING  FACILITIES 

RETENTION 

VISITATION 

PWOMOnONS 
SATISFACTION 

PENSIONS 

1 

1 

PRODUCTION 

QUALITY 
QUANTITY 
INCREASED 
EFFICIENCY 

FIG.  23. — Work  of  the  employment  manager  at  the  Winchester 
Plant. 

the  Chile  Exploration  Co.  in  that  capacity. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  no  employment  manager 
can  be  successful  unless  the  general  manager  of 
the  company  is  in  sympathy  with  modern  methods 
of  dealing  with  labor. 


110  LABOR  TURNOVER 

THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER1 

"At  the  present  time  when  the  subject  of  employment  is 
so  much  in  the  public  mind  it  would  seem  worth  while  to 
consider  the  personality  of  the  employment  manager. 
To  anyone  who  has  devoted  thought  to  the  question  it  is 
rather  astonishing  that  American  industry,  which  has  spent 
so  much  effort  on  organizing  efficient  purchasing  depart- 
ments and  testing  laboratories  for  materials,  has  absolutely 
ignored  until  recently  the  acquisition  of  proper  human 
material  which  after  all  is  the  backbone  of  any  successful 
organization.  The  chart,  Fig.  23,  is  used  by  L.  0.  Pethick, 
director  of  personnel  of  the  Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Co., 
and  indicates  the  varied  activities  in  personnel  work  that 
the  employment  manager  should  be  held  responsible  for. 
The  establishment  by  the  Government  during  the  war 
of  schools  for  employment  managers  and  the  establish- 
ment of  a  course  at  New  York  University  and  elsewhere 
show  that  the  lack  of  trained  men  in  this  line  is  at  last 
beginning  to  be  appreciated. 

BROAD  EXPERIENCE  NECESSARY 

"It  is  obvious  that  the  man  whose  duty  is  to  select 
other  men  and  women  for  a  certain  task  must  have  broad 
experience  and  education  to  make  him  competent  to  fill  his 
position.  If  it  is  important  to  have  a  highly  paid  specialist 
to  superintend  the  buying  of  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  goods 
yearly  or  to  pass  upon  the  proper  design  of  a  piece  of  ma- 
chinery, how  much  more  important  is  it  that  the  man  se- 
lected to  buy  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  human  nature  in  the 
course  of  a  year  must  be  properly  equipped  by  nature  and 
training  to  give  the  best  results. 

JBy  Philip  Brasher,  Employment  Manager  Chile  Exploration  Co.,  in  the 

American  Machinist , 


THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER  111 

"Take  the  training  of  the  employment  manager  first. 
In  my  opinion  no  one  can  properly  hire  men  who  has  not 
done  a  great  deal  of  really  laborious  work  himself.  By 
this  I  mean  actual  physical  labor  of  various  kinds  with 
his  hands.  A  man  should  have  had  a  general  experi- 
ence of  at  least  ten  years,  and  better  twenty,  if  that  is 
possible.  He  should  also  have  a  good  fundamental  educa- 
tion, and  if  he  has  a  higher  education  so  much  the  better; 
that  is,  if  it  does  not  result  in  his  acquiring  too  many  theo- 
retical ideas  which  sometimes  are  the  curse  of  a  "college 
education."  In  addition  to  this  the  employment  manager 
should  have  traveled  and  served  an  apprenticeship  in  dif- 
ferent localities  and,  if  possible,  in  several  countries.  In 
other  words,  he  should  have  broad  education  and  experience 
upon  which  to  build  before  he  is  considered  to  be  competent 
to  pass  judgment  upon  others.  These  considerations,  I 
believe,  make  the  employment  manager's  job  an  ideal  one  for 
an  older  man. 

"The  responsibility  of  an  employment  manager  is  seldom 
appreciated  by  those  who  have  not  a  clear  understanding 
of  the  situation.  Many  times  a  day  he  has  the  power  to 
make  or  break  some  individual,  and  this  is  something  which 
should  always  be  kept  in  mind.  An  employment  office 
cannot  be  conducted  as  an  eleemosynary  institution,  but 
a  courteous  reception  and  hearing  and  a  suggestion  as  to 
some  place  where  immediate  employment  may  be  secured 
if  the  services  of  the  applicant  cannot  be  used  by  the  em- 
ployment manager's  concern  are  part  of  the  modern  plan. 
There  is  enlightened  self-interest  in  this. 

THE  IDEAL  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER 

"Now  to  get  down  to  the  real  foundation  of  the  mat- 
ter, namely,  the  inherent  traits  and  qualifications  that 


112  LABOR  TURNOVER 

make  up  the  personality  of  the  employment  manager. 
No  matter  what  education,  no  matter  what  experience, 
no  matter  what  training  he  might  have,  unless  he  be  the 
right  type  of  man  he  cannot  render  satisfactory  service. 
I  believe — and  please  keep  in  mind  that  I  am  stating 
my  idea  of  the  ideal  employment  manager,  not  the  one 
you  are  apt  to  secure,  but  the  one  you  should  aim  to  get — 
that  he  should  have  an  unlimited  stock  of  hardheaded 
common  sense,  which  would  eliminate  any  tendency  toward 
the  impractical  no  matter  how  splendid  the  underlying 
motive.  He  should  be  forceful,  keen  and  courageous,  be- 
cause no  mind  can  be  too  keen  for  the  job,  and  no  man  who 
is  well  balanced  can  be  too  courageous  to  meet  the  incessant 
opposition  that  will  be  occasioned  by  the  naturally  con- 
servative policy  to  be  found  in  most  old-line  companies. 
His  decisions  should  be  made  after  due  deliberation  based 
on  a  complete  knowledge  of  business  in  general  and  his  own 
organization  in  particular.  He  should  have  the  foresight 
to  see  what  the  result  of  his  decisions  is  going  to  be.  He 
should  have  an  organizing,  constructive  type  of  mind, 
and  these  qualities  will  be  tested  by  his  choice  of  the  imme- 
diate assistants  upon  whom  he  must  depend  for  a  great 
deal  of  the  actual  selection  of  employees.  He  should  be 
able  to  appreciate  the  commercial  and  financial  necessities 
of  the  situation,  because  the  first  principle  of  business  is 
that  it  should  pay.  He  ought  to  be  democratic,  responsive, 
enthusiastic  and  persuasive,  but  absolutely  just  and  con- 
scientious. He  should  be  sympathetic  and  observant,  a 
shrewd  student  of  human  nature,  with  intuition  highly  de- 
veloped. These  qualities,  I  believe,  are  essential. 

"His  experience  should  have  taught  him  the  general 
classes  into  which  men  and  women  naturally  fall: 

"First — Organizers.    Those  capable  of  opening  up  new 


THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER  113 

work;  starting  something  out  of  routine;  with  plenty  of 
initiative,  etc. 

"Second — Administrators.  Those  capable  of  taking  hold 
after  organization  has  been  completed  and  running  their 
jobs  with  the  maximum  of  conscientious  care. 

"Third — Detail  men.  Those  lacking  qualities  of  leader- 
ship. 

"Fourth — Ineligibles.  Those  not  suited  to  the  organi- 
zation for  one  reason  or  another. 

"The  man  who  takes  an  organizer  and  places  him  in  an 
administrator's  position  is  not  only  incompetent  in  his  own 
job,  but  eventually  causes  the  one  so  placed  to  fail  and  pos- 
sibly to  fail  miserably  later  on.  Therefore  his  responsibility 
is  twofold — to  his  employers  and  to  those  whom  he  places. 
He  will  always  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  no 
matter  how  much  he  may  improve  the  job  will  always  remain 
bigger  than  he. 

SHOULD  KNOW  WORK  AND  MEN 

"The  employment  manager  must  know  not  only  the 
work  and  how  it  should  be  done,  but  also  the  men  in  charge 
of  the  work.  If,  for  instance,  the  head  of  a  department 
has  a  prejudice  against  red-headed  men  it  is  wisdom  to 
refrain  from  sending  him  any  until  you  have  won  his  con- 
fidence to  such  an  extent  that  he  would  take  a  green-headed 
one  if  you  said  he  would  make  good. 

"At  the  present  time,  with  the  demand  for  efficient 
service  as  great  and  vital  as  it  is,  it  seems  to  me  that  too 
much  thought  and  effort  cannot  be  put  into  obtaining 
the  proper  men  to  select  the  personnel. 

"In  conclusion,  I  shall  quote  something  written  by 
John  M.  Siddall  which  might  almost  be  called  'The  Employ- 
ment Manager's  Creed:' 

8 


114  LABOR  TURNOVER 

"A  man  like  Schwab,  by  finding  and  encouraging  men 
and  by  inspiring  their  loyalty,  carries  himself  and  all  his 
associates  on  to  a  success  which  none  of  them  could  achieve 
alone.  He  establishes  a  long  battle  line  of  organization  in 
which  there  are  great  numbers  of  men  intelligently  used  and 
genuinely  appreciated  by  a  commander  who  realizes  that 
his  own  success  is  manifolded  by  the  work  of  his  associates. 

"In  business  it  is  not  the  individual  producer  who  gets 
the  biggest  or  surest  rewards.  It  is  the  organization 
builder.  Any  man,  no  matter  how  small  his  business, 
ought  to  recognize  that  fact.  Unless  an  employer  is  in- 
terested in  finding,  training,  holding  and  dividing  with 
good  men,  the  business  he  is  engaged  in  can  never  grow. 
It  will  remain  the  work  of  one  man,  and  the  work  of  one  man 
is  bound  to  be  limited  in  size  and  profits. 

"You  may  think  that  you  are  in  the  shoe  business  or 
the  shirt  business  or  the  furniture  business;  but  you  are 
mistaken.  After  all  is  said  and  done,  we  are  all  in  the  same 
business — the  man  business — no  matter  what  we  make  or 
sell.  Some  of  the  big  fellows  see  that  point  more  clearly 
than  the  rest  of  us  do,  and  multiply  their  profits  and  power 
accordingly." 

The  progressive  employment  manager  can  do 
much  to  help  secure  amicable  relations  with  labor 
in  the  years  to  come.  And  this  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  our  future  prosperity.  We  cannot 
meet  the  competition  of  the  world  with  labor 
antagonistic  and  sullen  because  it  believes  it  has 
been  unfairly  treated.  The  soldier  who  has 
braved  the  hardships  of  war  in  his  fight  for 
democracy  is  not  coming  back  to  this  country 


THE  EMPLOYMENT  MANAGER  115 

to  walk  the  streets  looking  for  work  or  to  accept 
pay  which  barely  keep  body  and  soul  together. 
The  standards  of  employment  insisted  upon  as 
necessary  for  war  work  will  not  be  discarded  in 
times  of  peace,  without  a  costly  struggle  which 
none  can  afford. 

The  employment  manager  must  have  a  position 
which  enables  him  to  consult  freely  with  the 
general  manager.  In  some  of  the  larger  concerns 
he  is  now  made  a  vice-president  of  the  company, 
the  same  as  the  vice-president  of  manufacturing. 
He  must  be  big  enough  for  the  importance  of  his 
work  and  be  recognized  as  filling  an  important 
position. 

There  seems  to  be  little  doubt  that  higher 
standards  of  living  means  increased  production 
in  most  cases.  This  in  turn  means  an  increase 
in  consuming  power,  for  labor  is  the  great  con- 
sumer in  any  country.  We  are  beginning  to 
realize  that  it  is  time  to  apply  the  same  business 
principles  in  labor  problems  as  with  other  con- 
sumers of  our  products. 

Some  employers  have  felt  themselves  person- 
ally aggrieved  at  the  high  wages  which  labor  has 
demanded  and  received  during  the  war.  Some 
have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  they  will  get  even 
when  jobs  are  less  plentiful  so  that  men  will 
have  to  accept  their  terms  or  starve.  A  little 


116  LABOR  TURNOVER 

careful  thought  will,  however,  show  that  the 
only  real  injury  has  been  to  their  pride  and  not 
to  their  pocket  book,  as  in  nearly  every  case  the 
increased  cost  of  labor  has  been  passed  on  to  ^he 
consumer.  The  employer  who  adopts  the  starva- 
tion policy  is  playing  with  fire  and  should  re- 
member the  words  of  the  President  in  addressing 
Congress  regarding  the  terms  of  the  armistice: 

"Hunger  does  not  breed  reforms;  it  breeds  madness  and 
all  the  ugly  distempers  that  make  ordered  life  impossible." 

No  far-sighted  business  man  is  going  to  run  the 
risk  of  breeding  such  madness  in  his  plant  or  in 
his  community.  The  lives  of  those  he  loves  are 
too  precious  to  take  any  such  chances. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN 

As  an  indication  that  there  is  a  new  conception 
of  business  and  one  which  must  add  new  phases 
to  the  problems  of  work  management,  I  am  quot- 
ing liberally  from  some  of  the  well-known  speakers 
at  the  last  conference  of  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce of  the  United  States  at  Atlantic  City, 
N.  J.  in  December,  1918. 

The  opening  address  of  the  President  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  the  United  States, 
Harry  A.  Wheeler,  contained  the  following  con- 
cerning the  question  of  labor  and  its  problems  in 
managing  industry. 

"We  are  facing  many  vital  changes  in  the  controlling 
power  of  the  political  and  economic  machinery  of  the  world, 
power  which  if  unrestrained  will  bring  much  grief  before 
it  settles  down  to  a  sober  and  intelligent  recognition  of  its 
ability  to  impose  harm  as  well  as  good. 

"In  our  own  country  the  control  of  our  National  destinies 
is  sure  to  be  vested  in  something  else  than  the  power  of 
wealth  or  the  intimidation  of  possession  of  great  resources. 
In  short,  the  less  fortunate  in  birth  or  possession,  being 
numerically  superior,  will  not  permit  a  revision  to  some  of 
the  methods  of  the  past,  nor  is  there  any  reason  to  believe 

117 


118  LABOR  TURNOVER 

that  those  who  occupy  the  position  of  the  more  fortunate  in 
material  things  will  be  less  anxious  to  assist  in  developing 
a  program  that  will  embody  the  best  provisions  for  co- 
operation and  will  eliminate  class  and  caste  in  our  internal 
personal  relationships. 

"It  is  only  by  sober  consideration  of  this  factor  that 
we  are  going  to  be  able  to  negotiate  this  period  of  reconstruc- 
tion without  the  disturbance  which  would  destroy  much  of 
the  satisfaction  we  have  gained  out  of  the  experience  on  the 
other  side,  and  as  an  example  to  the  boys  when  they  come 
home  of  how  we  have  acquired  a  new  solidarity  and  an 
understanding  of  the  value  of  coSperation.  Even  in  those 
relationships  formerly  regarded  as  subject  only  to  conflict 
of  interest. 

"  Do  I  think  that  the  problem  that  may  confront  us  with 
respect  to  labor's  attitude  or  that  may  confront  them  with 
respect  to  our  attitude  will  be  one  where  the  lion  and  the 
lamb  will  lie  down  together?  I  do  not;  but  I  call  to  your 
attention  and  to  them  that  the  lion  and  the  lamb  must 
browse  in  a  pasture  that  is  also  occupied  by  others  and  the 
lion  and  the  lamb  by  their  conflict  should  not  and  shall  not 
so  far  disturb  the  relationship  of  those  others  as  to  make  the 
pasture  an  uninhabitable  place." 

Frank  H.  Taylor,  General  Manager  of  the 
S.  S.  White  Dental  Co.,  whose  experience  in  work 
management  extends  to  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
said: 

"We,  as  manufacturers,  have  a  deep  responsibility  in 
respect  to  our  employees.  The  cost  of  living  cannot  be 
suddenly  reduced.  The  immediate  curtailment  of  wages, 
would  therefore  be  most  unfortunate  and  while  our  people 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  119 

are  working  out  their  personal  problems,  we  should  put  all 
of  our  force  into  plans  to  maintain  their  wage  rates. 

"There  is  concern  in  my  mind  that  when  prices  must 
finally  be  lowered,  we  shall  regulate  the  pay  of  our  people 
upon  some  new  basis,  and  having  this  in  mind,  I  will  throw 
out  briefly  an  idea  that  is  worth  thinking  about. 

"My  proposal  is  that  we  all  try  to  establish  in  our  minds 
a  minimum  or  basic  wage,  which  will  apply  to  those  who 
give  us  not  better  than  the  average  service,  and  that  in 
addition  the  service  rendered  by  our  people  individually. 
I  want  the  willing  worker  to  be  well  paid  for  all  the  service 
he  renders  that  is  above  and  beyond  what  is  received  from 
those  who  get  the  minimum  or  basic  pay. 

"  May  I  add  in  all  seriousness  that  in  addition  to  the  wages 
which  I  want  to  see  maintained,  we  owe  our  employees  an 
opportunity  to  secure  a  business  education  while  they  are 
in  our  employ. 

"The  plans  which  will  accomplish  the  above  ends  must  be 
made  and  carried  out  by  ourselves,  because  we  know  the 
business  problems  better  than  outsiders  can  know  them. 
Even  Government  officials  who  have  the  best  possible 
intentions  cannot  know  our  problems  intimately. 

The  address  of  Mark  L.  Requa,  General 
Director  of  the  Oil  Division,  United  States 
Fuel  Administration,  contained  the  following: 

"If  I  were  to  define  the  'spirit  of  the  times'  as  applied  to 
the  management  of  any  of  our  great  corporations,  I  should 
say  that  it  meant  a  broad  humanitarian  view  of  social 
problems,  a  sympathetic  interest  in  the  welfare  and  aspira- 
tions of  the  masses,  a  constant  and  intelligent  effort  to 
abolish  the  poverty  line  by  helpful  suggestion  and  wise 


120  LABOR  TURNOVER 

counsel,  a  realization  that  the  old  order  passeth,  that  labor 
is  entitled  to  a  just  wage,  rational  hours,  decent  working 
conditions,  and  that  capital  is  entitled  to  a  profit 
commensurate  with  the  hazard  of  the  particular  industry  in 
question,  and  that  both  must  work  in  harmony  if  either 
is  to  survive. 

"The  official  who  looks  to  the  balance-sheet  of  his  com- 
pany as  the  only  satisfactory  answer  to  his  stewardship  is 
shortsighted  and  has  but  faint  conception  of  the  real  nature 
of  his  trust.  His  is  a  far  more  important  task.  In  the  case 
of  the  great  corporation  he  is  in  truth  the  trustee  for  the 
people,  administering  affairs  that — while  perhaps  not  legally 
so  construed — are  as  truly  public-service  corporations  as 
are  our  railways. 

"Radicalism  runs  riot  among  those  who  have  nothing  to 
lose;  the  teaching  of  thrift,  therefore,  is  but  a  method  of 
conquering  radicalism.  In  self-defense,  if  nothing  more, 
capital  should  be  striving  and  planning  to  make  every  citizen 
a  property  owner,  to  make  every  one  of  us  hold  immediate 
and  personal  interest  in  the  stability  of  our  Government  by 
making  all  of  us  have  something  at  stake. 

"Trade-unionism  has  come  into  existence  because  man- 
kind was  forced  to  collective  bargaining  in  self-defense. 
That  there  are  bad  leaders  of  unions  is  no  more  an  excuse 
for  condemning  all  unions  than  is  the  condemning  all 
corporations  because  of  the  acts  of  the  few.  Public  senti- 
ment must  see  to  it,  in  the  future,  that  the  one  is  execrated 
equally  with  the  other;  and  if  so,  neither  can  long  survive. 

"In  speaking  as  I  have  I  realize  that  there  will  be  many 
in  the  ranks  of  both  labor  and  capital  who  will  refuse  to 
admit  the  possibility  of  such  a  program  succeeding.  It 
is  to  those  we  must  address  our  efforts.  The  task  will  not 
be  easy ;  it  will  take  years  to  accomplish;  but  in  the  end  it  can 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  121 

be  made  to  succeed.  It  is  but  one  step  in  the  evolution 
the  world  that  began  with  the  dawn  of  civilization  and  will 
continue  while  civilization  endures. 

Here  are  a  few  interesting  extracts  from  the 
address  of  John  D.  Rockefeller  on  Representa- 
tion in  Industry: 

"Obviously  the  day  has  passed  when  the  conception  of 
industry  as  primarily  a  matter  of  private  interest  can  be 
maintained.  To  cling  to  it  is  only  to  lay  up  trouble  for 
the  future  and  to  arouse  antagonism.  In  the  light  of  the 
present,  every  thinking  man  must  adopt  the  view  that  the 
purpose  of  industry  is  to  advance  social  well-being  rather 
than  primarily  to  afford  a  means  for  the  accumulation  of  in- 
dividual wealth.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however, 
that  industry  cannot  be  successfully  carried  on  unless  not 
only  the  community  and  the  workers  are  adequately  served 
but  those  whose  money  is  invested  are  enabled  to  realize 
a  just  return. 

"Who  are  the  parties  to  industry?  They  are  four  in 
number — Capital,  Management,  Labor  and  the  Community. 
Capital  is  represented  by  the  stockholders  and  is  usually 
regarded  as  embracing  Management.  Management  is, 
however,  an  entirely  separate  and  distinct  party  to  industry — 
it  consists  of  the  executive  officers,  who  are  the  administra- 
tors of  the  industry  and  who  bring  to  it  technical  skill  and 
managerial  experience.  Labor  is  represented  by  the 
employees,  but  its  contribution  unlike  that  of  capital,  is 
not  detachable  from  the  one  who  makes  it,  for  it  is  his 
physical  effort,  his  strength,  his  life. 

"Here  the  list  usually  ends,  for  the  fourth  party,  namely, 
the  community,  whose  interest  is  vital  and  in  the  last  analy- 


122  LABOR  TURNOVER 

sis,  controlling,  is  too  often  ignored.  The  community's 
right  to  representation  in  the  control  of  industry  and  in 
the  shaping  of  industrial  policies  is  similar  to  that  of  labor. 
But  for  the  community's  contribution,  in  the  maintenance  of 
law  and  order,  of  agencies  of  transportation  and  communica- 
tion, of  systems  of  money  and  credit  and  of  other  services, 
all  involving  continuous  outlays,  the  operation  of  capital, 
management  and  labor  would  be  enormously  hampered,  if 
not  rendered  well  nigh,  impossible.  Furthermore,  the  com- 
munity is  the  consumer  of  the  product  of  industry,  and  the 
money  which  it  pays  for  the  product  provides  the  wages, 
salaries  and  profits  that  are  distributed  among  the  other 
parties. 

Might  not  the  four  parties  to  industry  subscribe 
to  an  industrial  creed  somewhat  as  follows : 

"1.  I  believe  that  Labor  and  Capital  are  partners,  not 
enemies;  that  their  interests  are  common  interests,  not  op- 
posed, and  that  neither  can  attain  the  fullest  measure  of 
prosperity  at  the  expense  of  the  other,  but  only  in  associa- 
tion with  the  other. 

"2.  I  believe  that  the  community  is  an  essential  party  to 
industry  and  that  it  should  have  adequate  representation 
with  the  other  parties. 

"3.  I  believe  that  the  purpose  of  industry  is  quite  as  much 
to  advance  social  well-being  as  material  well-being  and  that 
in  the  pursuit  of  that  purpose  the  interests  of  the  community 
should  be  carefully  considered,  the  well-being  of  the  em- 
ployees as  respects  living  and  working  conditions  should  be 
fully  guarded,  management  should  be  adequately  recognized 
and  capital  should  be  justly  compensated,  and  that  failure 
in  any  of  these  particulars  means  loss  to  all  four. 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  123 

"4.  I  believe  that  every  man  is  entitled  to  an  opportunity 
to  earn  a  living,  to  fair  wages,  to  reasonable  hours  of  work 
and  proper  working  conditions;  to  a  decent  home,  to  the 
opportunity  to  play,  to  learn,  to  worship  and  to  love,  as  well 
as  to  toil,  and  that  the  responsibility  rests  as  heavily  upon 
industry  as  upon  government  or  society,  to  see  that  these 
conditions  and  opportunities  prevail. 

"5.  I  believe  that  industry,  efficiency  and  initiative, 
wherever  found,  should  be  encouraged  and  adequately 
rewarded,  and  that  indolence,  indifference  and  restriction 
of  production  should  be  discountenanced. 

"6.  I  believe  that  the  provision  of  adequate  means  of 
uncovering  grievances  and  promptly  adjusting  them  is  of 
fundamental  importance  to  the  successful  conduct  of 
industry. 

"7.  I  believe  that  the  most  potent  measure  in  bringing 
about  industrial  harmony  and  prosperity  is  adequate 
representation  of  the  parties  in  interest;  that  existing  forms 
of  representation  should  be  carefully  studied  and  availed 
of  in  so  far  as  they  may  be  found  to  have  merit  and  are 
adaptable  to  the  peculiar  conditions  in  the  various  industries. 

"8.  I  believe  that  the  most  effective  structure  of  represen- 
tation is  that  which  is  built  from  the  bottom  up,  which 
includes  all  employees,  and,  starting  with  the  election  of 
representatives  in  each  industrial  plant,  the  formation  of 
joint  works'  committees,  of  joint  district  councils,  and 
annual  joint  conferences  of  all  the  parties  in  interest  in  a 
single  industrial  corporation,  can  be  extended  in,  include  all 
plants  in  the  same  industry,  all  industries  in  a  community, 
in  a  nation,  and  in  the  various  nations. 

"9.  I  believe  that  the  application  of  right  principles 
never  fails  to  effect  right  relations  that  the  latter  killeth  and 
the  spirit  maketh  alive;  that  forms  are  wholly  secondary 


124  LABOR  TURNOVER 

while  attitude  and  spirit  are  all  important,  and  that  only  as 
the  parties  in  industry  are  animated  by  the  spirit  of  fair 
play,  justice  to  all  and  brotherhood,  will  any  plans  which 
they  may  mutually  work  out  succeed. 

"10.  I  believe  that  that  man  renders  the  greatest  social 
service  who  so  cooperates  in  the  organization  of  industry 
as  to  afford  to  the  largest  number  of  men  the  greatest 
opportunity  for  self-development  and  the  enjoyment  by 
every  man  of  those  benefits  which  his  own  work  adds  to  the 
wealth  of  civilization. 

THE  GREATER  VALUES  IN  LIFE 

"Men  are  rapidly  coming  to  see  that  human  life  is  of  in- 
finitely greater  value  than  material  wealth,  that  the  health, 
happiness  and  well-being  of  the  individual,  however  humble, 
is  not  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  selfish  aggrandizement  of  the 
more  fortunate  or  more  powerful.  Modern  thought  is 
placing  less  emphasis  on  material  considerations.  It  is 
recognizing  that  the  basis  of  national  progress,  whether 
industrial  or  social,  is  the  health,  efficiency  and  spiritual 
development  of  the  people.  Never  has  there  been  a  more 
profound  belief  in  human  life  than  today.  Whether  man 
work  with  brain  or  brawn,  they  are  human  beings  with  the 
same  cravings,  the  same  aspirations,  the  same  hatreds,  the 
same  capacity  for  suffering,  and  for  enjoyment. 

"As  the  leaders  of  industry  face  this  period  of  reconstruc- 
tion, what  will  their  attitude  be?  Will  it  be  that  of  the 
stand-patters,  who  take  no  account  of  the  extraordinary 
changes  which  have  come  over  the  face  of  the  civilized  world 
and  have  taken  place  in  the  minds  of  men,  who  say,  *  What 
has  been  and  is,  must  continue  to  be — with  our  backs  to  the 
wall  we  will  fight  it  out  along  the  old  lines  or  go  down  with 
the  ship.'  Will  they  attempt  stubbornly  to  resist  the 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  125 

inevitable,  and  arming  themselves  to  the  teeth,  invite  open 
warfare  with  the  other  parties  in  industry?  The  certain 
outcome  of  this  will  be  financial  loss,  inconvenience  and 
suffering- to  all,  the  development  of  bitterness  and  hatred, 
and  in  the  end  the  bringing  about  through  legislation  if 
not  by  force,  conditions  far  more  drastic  and  radical  than 
could  now  be  amicably  arrived  at  through  mutual  con- 
cession in  friendly  conference? 

THE  NEW  ORDER 

"Or  will  it  be  an  attitude,  in  which  I  myself  profoundly 
believe,  which  takes  cognizance  of  the  inherent  right  and 
justice  of  the  principles  underlying  the  new  order,  which 
recognizes  that  mighty  changes  are  inevitable,  many  of  them 
desirable,  and,  not  waiting  until  forced  to  adopt  new  meth- 
ods, they  will  take  the  lead  in  calling  together  the  parties  in 
interest  for  a  round-table  conference  to  be  held  in  a  spirit 
of  justice,  fair  play  and  brotherhood  with  a  view  to  working 
out  some  plan  of  cooperation  which  will  insure  to  all  those 
concerned  adequate  representation,  an  opportunity  to 
earn  a  fair  wage  under  proper  working  and  living  conditions, 
with  such  restrictions  as  to  hours  as  shall  leave  time  not 
alone  for  food  and  sleep,  but  also  for  recreation  and  the 
development  of  the  higher  things  of  life. 

"Never  was  there  such  an  opportunity  as  exists  today  for 
the  industrial  leader  with  clear  vision  and  broad  sympathy 
permanently  to  bridge  the  chasm  that  is  daily  gaping  wider 
between  the  parties  in  interest  and  to  establish  a  solid 
foundation  for  industrial  prosperity,  social  improvement  and 
national  solidarity.  Future  generations  will  rise  up  and 
call  those  men  blessed  who  have  the  courage  of  their  con- 
victions, a  proper  appreciation  of  the  value  of  human  life 
as  contrasted  with  material  gain,  and  who,  imbued  with  the 


126  LABOR  TURNOVER 

spirit  of  brotherhood,  will  lay  hold  of  the  great  opportunity 
for  leadership  which  is  open  to  them  today. 

"In  conclusion,  let  it  be  said  that  upon  the  heads  of  these 
leaders — it  matters  not  to  which  of  the  four  parties  they 
belong — who  refuse  to  reorganize  their  industrial  households 
in  the  light  of  the  modern  spirit,  will  rest  the  responsibility 
for  such  radical  and  drastic  measures  as  may  later  be  forced 
upon  industry  if  the  highest  interest  of  all  are  not  shortly 
considered  and  dealt  with  in  a  spirit  of  fairness.  Who,  I 
say,  dares  to  block  the  wheels  of  progress,  and  to  fail  to 
recognize  and  seize  the  present  opportunity  of  helping 
to  usher  in  a  new  era  of  industrial  peace  and  prosperity? 

Here  is  what  Charles  M.  Schwaab,  who 
perhaps  employs  more  labor  than  any  other 
man  in  the  United  States  if  not  in  the  world, 
says  about  the  new  phases  of  the  problems  of 
management. 

"My  friends,  there  is  one  other  question  of  great  and 
timely  importance,  to  cover  which  no  one  can  lay  down 
general  rules,  and  that  is  this  great  and  important  labor 
question.  I  am  one  of  the  men  who  believes  in  the  fairness 
of  American  labor.  I  am  one  of  the  men  who  believes  that 
the  only  foundation  upon  which  any  of  these  things  can 
permanently  rest  is  the  economic  use  of  everything,  whether 
it  be  labor,  material,  manufacture  or  what  not.  Any 
foundation  of  organized  labor  or  capital  that  is  on  a  false 
basis  must  fail. 

"Our  Congress,  our  legislature  in  Washington,  realized 
it,  and  rightly  and  justly  took  steps  to  correct  it.  What  has 
been  true  of  capital  will  be  equally  true  of  labor,  and  there- 
fore the  education  of  the  American  laboring  man,  must 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  127 

be  to  have  him  realize  that  his  permanency  and  success, 
and  the  success  of  the  nation,  will  depend  upon  labor  con- 
ditions and  capital  conditions  that  are  founded  on  economic 
principles  first  of  all. 

"I  am  not  opposed  to  organized  labor.  I  believe  that 
labor  should  organize  in  individual  plants  or  amongst 
themselves  for  the  better  negotiation  of  labor  and  the  pro- 
tection of  their  own  rights;  but  the  organization  and  control 
of  labor  in  individual  plants  and  manufacturies,  to  my  mind, 
ought  to  be  made  representative  of  the  people  in  those 
plants  who  know  the  conditions. 

SHARING  WITH  LABOR 

"But,  gentlemen,  in  the  years  gone  by,  I  seriously  doubt 
many  times  if  labor  has  received  its  fair  share  of  the  pros- 
perity of  this  great  country.  We,  as  manufacturers,  have 
got  to  open  our  eyes  to  a  wide  vision  of  the  present  and  the 
future  with  reference  to  our  workmen.  We  have  got  to 
devise  ways  and  means  by  which  capital  and  labor  shall 
share  equally,  not  in  theory,  but  in  practice.  We  have  got 
to  devise  ways  and  means  of  education.  We  must  not 
only  talk  about  these  things  but  we  must  do  these  things. 
We  have  got  to  realize  that  many  unjust  demands  will  be 
made  by  labor  as  they  probably  have  been  made  by  capital- 
ists and  employers  in  the  past.  That  is  one  of  the  lessons 
this  great  war  has  taught  us — true  democracy.  The  thing 
we  have  to  do  is  to  touch,  not  patronize,  to  educate  and  have 
the  American  laborer  know  and  feel  that  he  can  stand  with 
his  head  in  the  air  as  you  and  as  I  can,  and  say  with  pride, 
"I  am  an  American  citizen." 

What  does  American  citizenship  mean  except  that^any 
man  to  be  a  true  American  citizen  must  be^able^tojhold 


128  LABOR  TURNOVER 

up  his  head  and  feel  within  his  heart  that  he  has  done  his 
duty  to  his  nation  and  to  his  fellow  men. 

AUTOCRACY  DEAD 

"Matters  will  adjust  themselves  industrially  in  this 
country  sooner  or  later  by  the  natural  course  of  events, 
but  what  we  want  to  prevent  is  that  sudden  slip  of  the 
cog  which  will  give  us  a  social  jolt  that  may  be  dangerous 
to  our  industries  for  years  to  come.  We  must  be  patient. 
We  must  go  along  with  small  or  no  profits  if  necessary. 
We  must  bend  every  effort  to  keep  our  employees  busy, 
employed  and  satisfied.  They  must  be  made  to  realize 
the  situation  as  we  see  it  and  be  content  to  help  us  in 
that  development.  We  must  get  closer  together  with  our 
work  people.  We  must  listen  with  patience  to  their  side  of 
the  story.  The  day  of  autocracy  in  government  and  labor 
has  gone  by.  It  is  the  day  of  democracy  in  which  we  now 
stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  for  the  protection  of  our  mutual 
interests. 

"Let  us  go  home  with  our  minds  and  hearts  filled  with 
determination  that  we  American  manufacturers  and  Ameri- 
can business  men  are  going  to  have  successful  accomplish- 
ments, that  we  are  going  to  have  it  in  an  honorable  way  and 
that  we  ask  our  great  representatives  in  Washington, 
from  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  down, 
to  help  American  business  men  help  sustain  the  prestige  of 
the  American  nation  and  that  we  pledge  ourselves  to  treat 
fairly  with  that  great  army  of  workmen  who  must  share 
with  us  the  prosperity  and  happiness  of  this  great  country  of 
ours. 

Henry  P.  Kendall,  Executive  Secretary,  Com- 
mittee of  Industrial  Relations  and  himself  a 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  129 

large  employer,  has  this  to  say,  in  a  paper  before 
the  American  Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers, 
December,  1918,  on  the  "Standardization  and 
Administration  of  Wages." 

"With  the  end  of  the  war,  the  greatest  industrial  problem 
doubtless  is  this:  What  general  principles  shall  be  followed 
in  dealing  with  the  labor  problems  of  the  future  with  all 
their  unseen  dangers  and  possibilities?  War  has  changed 
conditions  to  such  an  extent  that  a  return  to  the  status  quo 
ante  is  difficult,  even  though  it  were  desirable  and  possible. 
The  only  alternative  to  the  old  system  of  allowing  industrial 
relations  to  be  adjusted  by  natural  economic  laws  and  pre- 
venting bargains  seems  to  be  that  of  standardization,  or  the 
conscientious  and  systematic  regulation  of  these  relation- 
ships by  collective  action,  which  does  not  necessarily  mean 
Government  administration,  but  which  may  be  accom- 
plished by  voluntary  collective  action. 

"The  term  'standardization*  does  not  necessarily  mean 
uniformity  of  wages,  hours  or  conditions  of  work.  It  means 
the  determination  of  these  conditions  according  to  general 
principles,  the  justice  of  which  is  universally  acknowledged. 
It  is  much  easier  to  establish  general  principles  than  it  is 
to  derive  the  particular  standards  from  them  and  apply 
such  standards  to  actual  situations. 

REGULATION  OP  INDUSTRY 

"It  is  a  serious  question  whether  it  is  possible  to  escape 
the  task  of  regulating  industrial  relations.  There  are  even 
now  establishments  and  entire  industries  where  standard- 
ization is  already  imposed  upon  the  employer,  not  by  a  board 
in  which  his  interests  are  protected  by  arbitration,  but  by 


130  LABOR  TURNOVER 

labor  unions.  A  general  principle  which  determines  stand- 
ards under  these  conditions  is  not  to  the  best  interest  of  the 
industry,  and  does  not  even  take  into  consideration  justice 
either  to  employers  or  members  of  the  union,  but  only  the 
preservation  of  the  existence  and  power  of  the  union.  So 
long  as  the  union  must  fight  for  its  existence  and  is  subject 
to  attack,  it  must  adopt  this  principle  just  as  government's 
first  duty  is  self-preservation. 

"The  regulation  of  industrial  standards  by  joint  boards  as 
suggested  has  the  great  advantage  over  the  present  system  in 
that  it  eliminates  at  least  three-fourths  of  the  cost  of  friction 
and  strife  between  the  particular  employer  and  his  em- 
ployees. Each  employer  then  adopts  the  standards  which 
are  current  in  his  trade  and  knows  that  all  his  competitors 
are  on  the  same  basis  and  have  no  advantage  over  him. 

"Even  under  our  present  system,  the  chief  objection  to 
any  one  employer's  increasing  wages  lies  in  the  fact  that  it 
comes  out  of  the  profits  unless  the  increase  is  general  among 
his  competitors,  when  it  is  shifted  to  the  consumer  of  the 
product.  It  is  easy  to  foresee  a  time  when  the  public  and 
not  the  employers  will  have  the  chief  interest  in  opposing 
wage  advances. 

"In  many,  if  not  most,  of  the  cases  where  employment 
conditions  are  admittedly  unsatisfactory,  the  employers 
are  helpless  to  improve  them  on  account  of  the  pressure  of 
competition.  The  plan  for  organizing  adjustment  boards 
provides  a  remedy  for  this  by  attempting  to  establish 
sandards  for  itself  which  are  protected  against  demoraliza- 
tion by  competition. 

"The  tendencies  for  industries  to  become  more  and  more 
dependent  upon  each  other  is  increasing  and  the  consequence 
of  this  is  an  increasing  necessity  for  industrial  peace.  The 
indirect  effects  of  stoppages  increase  with  the  greater  inte- 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  131 

gration  of  industry,  and  the  number  of  interests  and  people 
who  suffer  from  labor  difficulty  and  yet  have  no  direct 
participation  in  them  grows  each  year.  A  street-railway 
strike,  for  example,  in  a  great  city  causes  a  collateral  loss 
of  business  all  out  of  proportion  to  the  amount  in  dispute 
between  the  company  and  its  employees.  The  indirect 
interests  affected  by  labor  disputes  are  therefore  becoming 
so  important  as  to  be  entitled  to  more  consideration  than 
they  have  had  in  the  past. 

"Standardization  is  increasing  in  the  larger  industrial 
establishments.  The  introduction  of  employment  and 
labor  departments  with  functionalized  executives  and  more 
or  less  application  of  the  principles  of  scientific  management 
has  tended  to  eliminate  the  older  methods  of  individual 
bargaining  by  a  foreman  or  shop  executives.  The  adminis- 
tration of  industrial  relations,  especially  wages,  by  a  skilled 
person  specialized  for  the  work  is  no  longer  an  experiment. 
There  is  a  natural  tendency  wherever  the  employment  mana- 
ger has  been  introduced  to  enlarge  his  functions  until  he 
becomes  a  part  of  the  management,  where  his  experience 
and  influence  are  utilized  for  the  benefit  of  the  business  in  all 
matters  touching  the  interests  of  the  employees. 

EMPLOYEES'  GRIEVANCES 

"No  industrial  administration  is  complete  until  in  some 
part  it  is  sensitive  or  responsive  to  the  aspirations  and  griev- 
ances of  the  employee.  The  efficiency  of  production  is  often 
affected  fundamentally  by  action  taken  in  other  depart- 
ments of  the  business.  Moreover,  the  labor  manager  has 
an  opportunity  to  interpret  a  business  policy  to  be  estab- 
lished by  the  working  force  and  may  frequently  forestall 
opposition  and  ill-feeling  by  timely  explanation  of  the 
reasons  for  such  policies  and  standards. 


132  LABOR  TURNOVER 

"There  is  a  tendency  where  standards  are  fixed  by  hap- 
hazard methods  or  in  the  heat  of  struggle  with  labor  unions 
for  certain  fundamentally  right  and  efficient  principles  to  be 
overlooked  or  submerged.  That  wherever  there  is  a  stand- 
ardized wage  there  should  also  be  a  specified  measure  of 
proficient  labor  performed  is  not  to  be  disputed  by  any 
reasonable  person;  yet  situations  are  created  where  this 
just  principle  is  opposed  by  labor  organizations  who  feel 
compelled  to  take  that  position  because  of  the  circumstances 
of  the  situation. 

"Another  principle,  equally  self-evident,  is  that  every 
worker  has  a  moral  right  to  compensation  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  his  individual  accomplishment,  yet  for  reasons  which 
seem  to  them  to  be  valid,  the  unions  frequently  set  them- 
selves squarely  against  piece-work  or  bonus  systems  which 
aim  to  employ  this  principle.  Under  some  system  of  stand- 
ardization it  is  likely  that  these  just  principles  may  be 
reestablished  with  proper  safeguards  against  abuse,  but 
not  until  then  is  it  possible  to  utilize  them  without  creating 
grievances. 

"The  war  period  has  created  a  very  perceptible  change  in 
attitude  on  the  part  of  employers  toward  what  is  loosely 
termed  "collective  bargaining."  This  does  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  the  management  of  industry  should  be  turned 
over  to  labor  unions,  nor  does  it  even  mean  that  employers 
shall  have  dealings  with  the  officials  of  labor  unions.  It  does 
mean,  however,  that  employers  recognize  the  need  for  a 
greater  sense  of  responsibility  on  the  part  of  the  employees 
toward  the  efficiency  and  success  of  the  business  in  which 
they  are  engaged,  and  that  in  order  to  develop  this  sense 
of  responsibility  greater  participation  in  those  matters  which 
vitally  concern  them  shall  be  granted  to  the  workers. 
Moreover,  the  worker  should  be  given  an  opportunity 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  133 

to  learn  more  about  the  policies  of  the  establishment  and  the 
difficulties  of  management.  It  is  recognized  that  the  in- 
difference and  even  hostility  of  the  workers  to  efficiency 
arises  from  their  relationship  to  the  business  and  the  absence 
of  reasons  why  they  should  be  interested. 

REPRESENTATION  IN  INDUSTRY 

"The  Federal  Labor  Administration,  following  the  Presi- 
dent's proclamation  by  which  the  War  Labor  Board  was 
created  and  manifested  in  the  collective-bargaining  clauses 
of  the  Quartermaster's  and  Ordnance  contracts,  gave  an 
impetus  to  the  general  principle  of  participation  in  manage- 
ment which  many  have  begun  to  see  offers  an  opportunity 
for  a  general  betterment  of  industrial  relations  in  individual 
plants.  The  introduction  of  a  system  of  organized  repre- 
sentation of  employees  by  the  Standard  Oil  interests  and  the 
apparent  success  of  the  idea  has  stimulated  general  interest, 
and  it  now  appears  that  this  idea  is  likely  to  be  much  more 
generally  accepted,  especially  by  large  industrial  plants. 

"The  misgivings  with  which  many  industrial  employers 
contemplate  the  introduction  of  this  principle  is  due  to  their 
fear  that  it  may  introduce  unionism  in  some  of  its  evil  forms 
into  their  establishments,  and  if  this  were  true  they  would 
be  justified.  It  seems  clear,  however,  that  the  worst 
features  of  unionism  are  due  to  the  circumstances  in  which 
these  organizations  must  be  created  and  developed;  the 
vigorous  opposition  of  employers  to  organization  among  the 
workers  creates  in  them  a  spirit  of  antagonism  to  the  em- 
ployer, and  this  naturally  creates  a  type  of  organization 
which,  because  of  the  hostility  engendered  by  the  warfare 
with  employers,  must  fight  for  its  life,  and  in  so  doing, 
must  create  a  spirit  of  hatred  and  disloyalty  to  the  employer 
among  the  membership.  We  have  seen  in  the  great  war 


134  LABOR  TURNOVER 

that  efficiency  in  fighting  depends  upon  the  passionate 
feeling  which  can  be  developed  in  fighters  against  the 
enemy.  This  accounts  for  the  unreasonable  and  violent 
practices  and  policies  of  the  labor  unions. 

"It  is  reasonable  to  expect  that  organization  of  employees 
fostered  by  the  employer  and  given  full  opportunity  to 
function  legitimately  in  matters  which  touch  the  interests  of 
employees  may  develop  into  constructive  agencies  whose 
criticisms  and  suggestions  may  be  of  great  value  in  improv- 
ing the  efficiency  of  the  business.  In  fact,  there  has  been 
enough  experience  in  several  American  establishments  and 
industries  to  show  that  this  is  a  natural  development  of 
employees'  representation.  That  responsibility  creates 
conservatism  is  a  truth  which  has  been  demonstrated,  and 
nowhere  more  convincingly  than  in  industrial  relations. 
Give  employees  responsibility  and  opportunity  to  exercise 
it  and  sooner  or  later  there  must  develop  leadership  among 
them  which  will  contribute  not  a  little  to  the  vitality  and 
general  efficiency  of  the  establishment. 

GIVE  LABOR  A  FAIR  SHARE 

"To  make  this  plan  truly  successful,  however,  the 
management  must  decide  to  give  labor  a  fair  share  of  the 
results  of  the  efficiencies  and  economies  realized.  Too 
often  by  the  introduction  of  new  methods  and  labor-saving 
machinery  the  employer  cannot  bring  himself  to  yield  a 
share  of  the  benefits  to  the  employees,  although  he  expects 
them  to  bear  uncomplainingly  the  hardships  which  may 
attend  the  transition.  The  difficulties  of  systematically 
giving  to  the  workers  their  share  of  the  profits  are  perplexing. 
In  fact,  the  subject  of  profit  sharing  is  very  attractive  to 
any  student  of  industrial  relations,  but  the  particular 
difficulties  have  frightened  many  away  from  the  subject. 


LATEST  IDEAS  OF  LEADING  MEN  135 

The  general  principle  that  every  man  should  have  the  oppor- 
tunity to  reap  the  reward  of  his  own  efficient  efforts  whether 
applied  individually  or  collectively  with  others  is  admitted 
by  all,  and  most  people  admit  that  the  principle  must  be 
employed  in  some  form  in  an  ideal  system. 

"Experience  with  profit  sharing  has  revealed  certain 
truths:  The  more  direct  and  immediate  the  relation  be- 
tween reward  and  special  effort  or  efficiency,  the  more  likely 
it  is  to  be  successful.  The  greater  the  benefit  realized  by 
the  worker  or  his  family  through  the  reward  of  special  effort, 
the  more  effective  is  it  as  an  inducement.  Bonuses  or 
other  extra  rewards  which  are  spent  by  the  worker  in  a 
wasteful  manner  and  without  a  proportionate  improvement 
in  his  general  well-being  are  not  so  highly  appreciated  as 
those  which  represent  some  permanent  benefit,  such  as 
insurance  for  his  family  against  sickness  or  death,  permanent 
improvement  in  his  living  conditions,  especially  housing, 
or  investments  which  increase  his  feeling  of  security  and 
give  him  an  incentive  to  thrift.  Any  system  of  profit 
sharing,  therefore,  should  take  into  full  account  the  perma- 
nent needs  of  the  worker  and  attempt  to  satisfy  them  to  a 
maximum. 

"The  absence  of  any  recognized  principle  for  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  profits  of  a  business  as  between  the  proprietor 
and  the  workers  is  a  great  problem,  especially  where  there 
is  an  amicable  system  of  industrial  relations  in  vogue.  It 
is  difficult  to  know  what  is  the  right  and  just  method  to 
use,  but  the  difficulty  will  be  largely  overcome  in  the  indi- 
vidual establishment  by  the  plan  of  standardization  or  regu- 
lation of  industrial  relations  by  industries  which  has  been 
previously  suggested. 

"If  this  perplexing  matter  of  distribution  could  be  elimi- 
nated from  the  relationship  between  employer  and  employees 


136  LABOR  TURNOVER 

in  particular  establishments,  then  the  introduction  of  the 
ideas  of  employment — labor  management,  representation 
of  employees,  responsible  leadership  among  the  employees 
and  the  comprehensive  service  department  helping  the 
employees  to  collectively  improve  their  living  conditions 
— might  result  in  a  relationship  so  applicable  and  profitable 
to  both  employer  and  employee  that  we  might  anticipate, 
if  not  have  the  solution  of  the  labor  problem;  at  least,  so 
great  an  improvement  over  the  old  condition  as  to  constitute 
an  industrial  revolution  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word." 


CHAPTER  IX 
COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING 

It  seems  to  be  pretty  generally  conceded  that 
the  era  of  collective  bargaining  is  at  hand.  This 
means  that  workers  must  be  dealt  with  through 
their  organizations  or  their  representatives  just 
as  in  all  legal  cases  both  sides  are  represented  by 
their  lawyers.  It  does  not  matter  whether  we 
like  the  lawyer  our  opponents  have  selected  or 
not,  the  court  hears  them  as  long  as  they  keep 
within  the  law.  If  we  refuse  to  answer  the 
questions  of  their  lawyer,  unless  for  especially 
good  reasons,  the  judge  reprimands  us. 

Among  the  conservative  men  who  see  that 
individual  dealings  with  workmen  is  on  the  wane 
is  Justice  Charles  E.  Hughes  who,  in  his  late 
speech  before  the  Institute  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
at  Columbia  University  on  November  30,  1918, 
said: 

"I  trust  there  will  be  no  more  struggles  in  futile  opposition 
to  the  right  of  collective  bargaining  on  the  part  of  employees. 
The  recognition  of  the  right  of  representation  and  the 
prompt  hearing  of  grievances  provide  the  open  doors  to 
reasonable  and  just  settlements.  And  in  returning  to 
peace  conditions  there  should  be  the  utmost  care  to  preserve 

137 


138  LABOR  TURNOVER 

every  possible  means  which  has  been  found  helpful  during 
the  war  for  the  investigation  of  the  complaints  of  labor  and 
for  the  adjustment  of  demands." 

Ex-president  William  Howard  Taft  goes  into 
more  details  in  a  copyrighted  editorial  in  the 
Philadelphia  Public  Ledger,  as  follows: 

"Organization  of  labor  has  become  a  recognized  insti- 
tution in  all  the  civilized  countries  of  the  world.  It  has 
come  to  stay;  it  is  full  of  usefulness  and  is  necessary  to 
the  laborer.  It  shows  serious  defects  at  times  and  in  some 
unions.  These  are  an  apparent  willingness  to  accept 
benefits  enforced  through  a  fear  of  lawlessness,  a  disposition 
to  use  duress  to  compel  laborers  to  join  unions,  and  efforts 
to  limit  output  and  to  create  a  dead  level  of  wages,  and 
thus  wipe  out  the  necessary  and  useful  difference  in  com- 
pensation of  those  who  are  industrious  and  skillful  and  of 
those  who  are  lazy  and  do  not  strive  to  increase  the  prod- 
uct of  the  employer  whom  they  serve. 

"  These  are  evils  that  as  the  unions  grow  in  wise  and 
intelligent  leadership  we  may  well  hope  will  be  greatly 
minimized. 

"Much  can  be  done  by  employers  in  anticipating  just 
demands  of  employees.  Workers  have  had  too  many 
instances  of  holding  back  of  employers  until  they  are  forced 
to  do  justice.  Too  many  employers  seek  to  justify  failure 
to  rae  waisges  by  pointing  to  their  welfare  work  for  their 
employes.  This  is  of  a  paternal  character  and  impresses 
the  workers  with  the  idea  that  they  are  being  looked  after 
as  wards  and  not  treated  as  men  capable  of  exercising 
independent  discretion  as  to  their  welfare.  They  are  apt 
to  give  the  employees  the  idea  that  it  is  a  generous  con- 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  139 

cession  they  are  making  out  of  the  goodness  of  their  hearts 
and  that  they  are  not  merely  yielding  a  right  for  a  quid 
pro  quo  for  what  they  receive. 

EXTREMISTS  HARD  TO  DEAL  WITH 

"The  most  difficult  persons  to  deal  with  are  the  extremists 
on  both  sides.  On  the  side  of  labor  there  seems  to  be  much 
suspicion  by  one  leader  or  another,  that  few  are  willing 
to  make  a  just  concession,  not  because  they  do  not  recognize 
its  justice,  but  because  if  they  admit  it  they  are  charged 
with  betraying  the  cause  of  labor.  Thus  they  furnish  to 
their  rivals  in  leadership  among  workingmen  the  opportu- 
nity to  undermine  their  standing  with  their  fellows.  This 
often  puts  the  labor  side  in  an  indefensible  position  and  of- 
fers to  its  enemies  a  basis  for  criticism  that  might  easily  be 
avoided. 

"On  the  other  hand,  there  is  among  employers  the  bour- 
bon, the  man  who  never  learns  anything  and  never  forgets 
anything;  the  man  who  says:  'It  is  my  legal  right  to  manage 
my  business  as  I  choose,  to  pay  such  wages  as  I  choose, 
to  agree  to  such  terms  of  employment  as  I  choose,  to  ex- 
clude from  my  employment  union  men,  because  I  do  not 
approve  of  the  tenets  of  the  union,  and  to  maintain  a  family 
arrangement  of  my  own.  I  do  fairly  by  my  men;  I  pay 
them  what  I  think  is  right,  and  they  will  not  complain 
unless  some  outside  union  agent  interferes.  I  run  a  closed 
non-union  shop,  and  I  am  happy  and  propose  to  continue 
happy/ 

LACKS  BREADTH  OF  VISION 

"This  man  is  far  behind  in  the  progress  of  our  social 
civilization.  He  lacks  breadth  of  vision  extending  beyond 
the  confines  of  his  shop.  He  looks  to  fear  of  courts  and 


140  LABOR  TURNOVER 

injunctions  and  police  and  militia  as  the  ordinary  and  usual 
instruments  for  continuing  his  business  peacefully  and 
maintaining  his  rights.  He  is  like  the  man  who  regards  the 
threat  of  a  divorce  court  as  a  proper  and  usual  means  of 
continuing  domestic  happiness.  He  does  not  recognize  that 
we  have  advanced  beyond  the  state  in  which  employers 
and  employees  are  mere  laws  unto  themselves. 

"He  does  not  see  that  the  whole  public  is  interested  in 
industrial  peace.  He  does  not  see  that  the  employers  have 
certain  duties  social  in  their  nature  that  are  not  defined 
and  are  not  enforcible  in  law,  but  exist  just  as  family  duties 
of  care  and  affection  exist.  He  has  not  followed  the  growth 
of  things. 

WEBB  AT  EMPLOYERS'  MERCY 

"As  long  as  the  system  that  he  insists  upon  continues, 
individual  laborers  were  at  the  mercy  of  their  employers. 
Whatever  they  got  was  a  concession.  They  could  not  main- 
tain themselves  in  a  contest  with  their  employer,  dependent 
as  they  were  on  their  daily  wage  and  independent  as 
he  was  with  accumulated  capital.  That  very  unjust 
situation  led  to  the  organization  of  labor  that  the  employee 
by  massing  contributions  may  maintain  himself  during  an 
industrial  struggle  without  wages. 

"This  has  come  to  collective  bargaining,  which  is  bar- 
gaining by  the  group  system.  A  group  of  laborers  knowing 
their  rights  and  knowing  how  to  maintain  them,  put  them- 
selves on  a  level  with  their  employers  and  the  result  reached 
is  far  nearer  a  just  one  than  any  before  attained.  That  it 
may  often  be  unjust  goes  without  saying,  but  so  are  all 
human  attempts  to  reach  the  right  line.  Of  course  those 
individual  laborers  who  do  not  see  the  advantage  to  them  of 
the  group  system  have  a  right  to  stay  out  and  must  be 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  141 

protected  in  doing  so.  But  whether  we  will  or  not,  the 
group  system  is  here  to  stay,  and  every  statesman  and  every 
man  interested  in  public  affairs  must  recognize  that  it  has 
to  be  dealt  with  as  a  condition  to  be  favored  in  such  a  way 
as  to  minimize  its  abuses  and  to  increase  its  utility. 

HAVE  BEEN  GIVEN  SENSE  OP  POWER 

"The  workingmen  of  the  country,  since  the  war  began 
and  the  importance  of  their  group  action  has  been  em- 
phasized by  the  requirements  of  the  war,  have  been  given  a 
sense  of  power  in  their  united  action  which  we  must  rec- 
ognize and  deal  with.  Of  course,  they  may  abuse  this  power, 
and,  if  so,  they  may  find  that  they  are  not  the  entire  com- 
munity; but  if  under  level-headed  leadership  they  do  not 
push  it  to  an  excess,  they  will  be  able  to  do  much  for  their 
members  and  indeed  for  the  community  at  large. 

"The  junkers  and  the  hunkers  on  both  sides  must  stand 
aside  and  will  be  set  aside  if  common  sense  prevails.  The 
danger  from  bolshevism  is  far  greater  than  from  reaction  to 
the  bourbon  type  of  employment.  The  intelligent,  con- 
servative leaders  of  the  labor  movement  should  be  encour- 
aged. Their  difficulties  in  dealing  with  their  extreme 
constituents  should  be  recognized. 

"A  national  board,  consisting  of  a  number  of  such  intelli- 
gent, conservative  labor  leaders  on  the  one  hand,  liberal- 
minded,  broad-visioned  representatives  of  the  employers  on 
the  other  hand,  should  be  continued  as  a  refuge  to  be  offered 
to  both  sides  of  an  industrial  controversy  about  to  engage 
in  wasteful  strife  by  strike  and  lockout,  so  that  their  argu- 
ments can  be  thrashed  out  and  some  sort  of  a  compromise 
approximating  justice  may  be  reached.  If  the  national 
war  labor  board  has  shown  the  wisdom  of  the  use  of  such  a 
board  it  has  attained  a  real  success." 


142  LABOR  TURNOVER 

PREFERS  TO  DEAL  WITH  UNIONS 

There  are  many  others,  well  known  to  all, 
and  most  of  them  conservative  rather  than  rad- 
ical in  all  things,  who  frankly  advocate  the  rec- 
ognition of  labor  organizations  and  cooperation 
with  them.  In  his  address  before  the  Babson 
Conference  on  Cooperation,  John  S.  Kent, 
president  of  the  Brockton  Shoe  Manufacturers' 
Association,  the  National  Association  of  Shoe 
Manufacturers  and  also  president  of  a  large 
shoe  manufacturing  company,  before  the  Babson 
Conference  outlined  his  20  years'  experience  in 
dealing  with  the  Boot  and  Shoe  Workers'  Union, 
and  in  all  that  time  there  had  been  no  labor  dis- 
turbance until  this  year  when  the  radical  group 
formed  a  new  union.  This,  however,  was  not 
at  all  serious.  He  advocated  the  closest  coopera- 
tion with  the  labor  leaders  instead  of  making 
outlaws  of  them,  and  said  that  his  greatest 
criticism  was  that  in  some  cases  they  built  up  a 
certain  autocracy  in  the  union,  which  failed  to 
hold  the  individual  men  and  women.  He  believes 
that  every  individual  in  the  shop  must  be  made 
to  feel  that  he  or  she  is  a  responsible  part  of  the 
union,  of  the  organization  and  of  the  community. 

Mr.  Kent  spoke  of  the  excellent  work  done 
by  the  State  Board  of  Arbitration,  and  suggested 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  143 

the  advisability  of  a  national  labor  board  to 
which  all  matters  could  be  appealed  and,  if 
possible,  settled.  He  does  not  believe  that  labor 
will  ever  be  satisfied  any  more  than  capital, 
but  that  both  will  strive  for  better  things,  which 
is  a  good  thing  for  the  country.  He  has  found 
that  satisfactory  dealings  with  union  or  any  kind 
of  labor  depend  largely  on  the  attitude  of  the 
employer.  The  employer  must  consider  that 
the  other  man  is  as  human  as  himself,  and  must 
realize  that  any  attempt  to  keep  men  down  as 
workmen  is  largely  responsible  for  the  distrust 
and  antagonism  found.  He  believes  in  meeting 
his  men  face  to  face  as  men,  and  in  dealing  with 
them  through  their  organizations.  He  feels  that 
organized  labor  will  break  down  class  distinction 
and  instill  a  better  spirit  into  the  men.  This  is 
the  result  of  his  20  years7  experience  and  is  there- 
fore entitled  to  careful  consideration. 

DECREASING  SPOILED  WORK 

At  the  same  conference  C.  H.  Skinner  of  the 
Covert  Gear  Manufacturing  Co.  told  of  the 
improved  results  the  company  has  secured  since 
forming  an  organization  in  its  shop.  It  includes 
all  the  men  and  foremen  and  is  about  to  become 
a  part  of  the  regular  union.  Since  the  organiza- 
tion was  formed,  in  which  an  attempt  was  made  to 


144  LABOR  TURNOVER 

deal  with  the  men  as  men  and  on  what  Mr. 
Skinner  termed  a  " fifty-fifty  basis,"  lost  time 
had  been  reduced  from  9  per  cent,  to  less  than 
4  per  cent.,  production  had  increased  50  per  cent., 
and  spoiled  work  has  also  been  greatly  reduced. 
The  men  were  asked  to  organize  so  that  they 
could  be  dealt  with  collectively. 

The  management  endeavors  to  know  its  men 
thoroughly,  to  see  that  wages  are  raised  as  soon 
as  due  and  to  transfer  men  from  one  department 
to  another  in  order  to  secure  better  results,  and 
it  has  found  the  combination  to  work  satisfac- 
torily. They  believe  by  taking  an  interest  in 
the  men  at  their  work  that  this  will  be  returned, 
as  men  like  to  feel  that  their  work  is  appreciated 
and  that  they  are  coworkers  instead  of  hired 
hands.  The  55-hour  week,  under  which  they 
have  been  working,  has  been  found  too  long,  and 
this  is  to  be  reduced  to  48,  as  the  management  is 
convinced  that  the  output  can  be  made  at  least 
equal  to  that  obtained  at  the  present  time. 

THE  TIME  HAS  COME  FOR  COOPERATION 

There  are  those  who,  owing  to  unfortunate 
experiences  with  labor  organizations  in  the  past, 
believe  that  their  only  salvation  is  to  fight  all 
organizations  of  labor.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  merits  of  this  attitude  in  the  past,  it  is 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  145 

untenable  at  the  present  time  when  everything 
points  to  the  growth  of  collective  bargaining  as 
one  of  the  principles  of  employment.  This  has 
been  recognized  by  all  the  allied  governments,  in- 
cluding our  own,  and  it  is  upheld  very  strongly  by 
many  of  the  best  known  British  employers  who 
have  had  much  more  experience  in  that  direction 
than  we. 

No  one  will  deny  that  labor  organizations  have 
made  unwarranted  demands  in  the  past  and  that 
they  have  not  always  kept  their  agreements. 
Neither  would  it  be  difficult  to  find  cases  where 
organizations  of  employers  have  taken  advantage 
of  their  power  and  where  rates  have  been  cut 
without  warrent.  Recrimination  does  no  good 
in  either  case,  the  problem  is  to  find  a  way  in 
which  industrial  harmony  can  be  secured  and 
maintained  with  fairness  to  all  concerned.  And 
this  we  are  coming  to  learn,  means  the  com- 
munity or  general  public  as  well  as  the  employer 
and  employee. 

The  experience  of  those  employers  who  have 
voluntarily  granted  a  large  measure  of  self- 
government  to  their  employees,  or  have  even 
given  them  a  voice  in  the  actual  management 
of  the  concern,  shows  that  there  is  little  to  fear 
from  unfair  decisions  when  the  facts  of  case  are 
laid  before  them.  The  experience  of  the  Filene 

10 


146  LABOR  TURNOVER 

Company  as  outlined  on  page  30  can  be  dupli- 
cated in  many  instances.  The  average  employee 
means  to  be  fair  just  as  does  the  average  employer. 
It  is  the  exception  on  both  sides  which  brings  the 
whole  mass  into  disrepute. 

BUILDING  UP  A  LOYAL  ORGANIZATION 

The  manufacturer  who  decides  to  gather  his 
organization  into  a  real  family  group,  both  as 
to  having  a  voice  in  the  management  of  the  shop 
and  a  share  in  the  profits,  is  anticipating  the 
trend  of  the  times  and  can,  by  so  doing,  build  up 
such  a  loyal  organization  as  to  make  the  results 
astonishing,  even  to  himself.  True  there  are 
bound  to  be  lean  years,  but  men  do  not  expect 
the  impossible.  And  when  they  have  confidence 
in  the  men  at  the  head,  a  confidence  born  of 
equitable  and  friendly  relations,  they  will  work 
all  the  harder  when  occasion  demands. 

The  millenium  is  not  likely  to  result  from  any 
of  the  plans  suggested,  nor  should  it  be  expected. 
No  arrangement,  however  perfect,  will  function 
properly  at  all  times.  No  family  ever  lives  with 
a  complete  understanding  on  all  questions  at  all 
times,  and  we  should  not  expect  more  in  the 
industry  with  its  mixture  of  nationalities  and  the 
great  differences  in  temperament  of  the  different 
people.  We  must  realize  that  new  problems  are 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  147 

being  presented  and  that  they  cannot  be  solved 
by  old  methods  in  all  eases. 

THE  COMMUNITY  MUST  BE  CONSIDERED 

The  main  thing  is  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
newer  idea  that  every  one  owes  a  duty  to  the 
community  and  to  the  country  and  that  the  time 
is  passing  when  we  can  act  without  reference  to 
its  effect  on  others.  The  time  is  fast  going  by 
when  we  can  say,  with  the  old  railroad  president, 
"the  public  be  damned." 

The  manager  of  a  large  factory  recently  an- 
nounced that  he  would  burn  his  shop  down 
rather  than  deal  with  his  men  on  a  disputed 
question  or  submit  to  the  ruling  of  the  govern- 
ments board  of  arbiters.  But  he  soon  found 
that  he  was  not  on  a  desert  island  but  a  member 
of  a  community  and  of  a  country  which  needed 
the  products  of  his  factory,  and  that  dire  punish- 
ment awaited  him  should  he  attempt  to  carry 
out  his  threat.  It  is  not  easy  to  accept  this 
doctrine  in  all  cases  but  there  is  every  indication 
that  it  has  come  to  stay  and  the  sooner  we  recog- 
nize it  the  better  for  all  concerned.  Czarism  is 
not  to  be  tolerated  on  either  side  of  the  employ- 
ment question.  There  must  be  a  "League  of 
Nations"  which  shall  prevent  industrial  differ- 
ences from  reaching  the  warlike  stage,  if  we  are 


148  LABOR  TURNOVER 

to  take  our  place  in  the  world  markets  of  the 
coming  generation. 

A  manufacturing  friend  with  an  eye  for  the 
future  has  been  seeking  a  method  of  giving  his 
men  an  interest  in  the  concern  without  the 
usual  difficulties  of  stock  transference  and  similar 
details.  He  wishes,  for  the  present  at  least  to 
retain  title  to  the  business,  and  yet  feels  that 
every  man  who  actively  produces  should  have 
his  share  of  the  profits.  The  plan  is  as  follows 
and  is  given  as  suggestion  for  any  who  may  be 
interested  along  a  similar  line.  It  differs  from 
the  plans  adopted  by  several  such  large  concerns 
as  the  Cleveland  Twist  Drill  Company,  which 
has  a  very  successful  method  of  distribution. 

A  SUGGESTED  PLAN  FOR  PROFIT  SHARING 

This  plan  first  lays  aside  6  percent  as  interest 
or  dividend  on  the  money  invested  which  it 
pays  to  stock  holders.  It  then  puts  aside  such 
percentage  as  may  be  necessary  for  a  sinking 
fund  to  take  care  of  depreciation,  renewals  and 
unforeseen  contingencies.  The  remainder  of  the 
net  profit  is  then  divided  pro  rata,  according  to 
salary,  among  every  worker  in  the  plant. 

This  is  on  the  assumption  that  the  salaries 
paid  represent  the  contribution  of  each  worker 
to  the  output,  and  is  as  fair  a  way  as  any,  assum- 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  149 

ing  that  certain  salaries  are  not  padded  for  this 
purpose.  The  owner  in  this  case  draws  his  6 
percent  on  the  capital  invested,  plus  his  per- 
centage of  the  surplus,  in  accordance  with  his 
salary  as  manager.  The  superintendent,  assum- 
ing that  his  salary  was  one-half  that  of  the  mana- 
ger would  draw  one-half  as  much  bonus  but  the 
owner  would  of  course,  have  his  interest  on 
capital  in  addition.  If  any  of  the  stock  was 
held  by  one  who  did  not  do  anything  toward  the 
productive  work  of  the  company,  this  stock 
holder  would  receive  nothing  but  his  6  percent 
interest. 

In  this  way  each  worker  virtually  has  a 
drawing  account  the  same  as  a  travelling  sales- 
man and  he  gets  his  commissions,  or  earnings, 
at  stated  intervals.  It  is  generally  best  to  have 
these  intervals  as  frequent  as  possible,  especially 
until  the  system  is  well  established.  This  brings 
a  very  pleasant  and  a  very  forcible  reminder 
which  proves  beyond  a  doubt  that  the  worker 
is  a  part  of  the  institution. 

There  are,  of  course,  many  other  details  to  be 
considered.  Continuity  of  service,  the  rewards 
due  to  standing  by  a  firm  through  thick  and  thin, 
must  be  cared  for  in  some  way.  The  value  of 
the  accumulated  knowledge  of  years  must  also 
be  considered.  But  this  may  form  some  sort  of 


150  LABOR  TURNOVER 

a  basis  from  which  a  workable  plan  may  be 
evolved. 

The  details  of  such  a  plan  as  this  must  be 
worked  out  for  the  individual  case.  But  there 
can  hardly  be  a  question  as  to  the  effective 
organization  which  can  be  built  up  in  this  way, 
where  every  man  can  see  how  his  own  efforts 
and  those  of  his  co-workers  affect  the  profits  or 
bonus  which  he  will  receive.  The  shirker  is 
weeded  out  by  his  companions  without  much 
hesitation  when  he  is  a  menace  to  their  earnings. 

Other  shops  have  worked  out  plans  of  giving 
a  bonus  for  steady  attendance  every  day  of  the 
week  and  an  additional  bonus  when  the  monthly 
sheet  shows  no  absences.  These  have  had  a  very 
good  effect  in  preventing  machines  from  lying 
idle,  but  this  is  automatically  taken  care  of  by 
the  general  bonus  or  profit-sharing  plan  as 
first  outlined. 

The  bonus  on  all  work  over  a  set  standard  is 
quite  a  common  practice  but  is  not  as  popular 
as  it  might  be  in  some  quarters.  The  charge  is 
frequently  made  that  it  is  used  as  a  method  of 
inducing  speeding  up  beyond  a  safe  limit,  but 
this  of  course  depends  upon  the  needs  or  on  the 
avariciousness  of  the  man  in  question. 

Some  object  to  anything  approaching  profit- 
sharing  on  the  ground  that  it  necessitates  showing 


COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING  151 

the  books  of  the  company  to  the  workers.  The 
workings  of  the  income  tax  law  has  however, 
paved  the  way  for  this  as  we  can  have  very  few 
secrets  in  this  connection  and,  when  we  get  over 
the  first  shock  of  the  new  procedure,  it  will  not 
seem  nearly  as  difficult,  should  we  decide  that 
this  is  the  better  way.  But  whatever  we  do, 
let  us  keep  abreast  of  the  tide  instead  of  being 
swept  along  with  it. 

THE  SQUAKE  DEAL  WILL  WIN 

No  one  can  predict  with  any  certainty  as  to 
the  working  out  of  the  problems  which  are  before 
us.  But  if  we  can  prevent  clashes  between  the 
radicals  of  both  capital  and  labor,  all  will  be  well. 
The  radicals  on  both  sides  are  dangerous  to  the 
well  being  of  the  country.  We  have,  fortunately, 
large  employers  of  labor  who  see  that  the  old 
condition  was  not  all  that  might  be  desired  and 
who  are  striving  to  bring  about  a  better  under- 
standing between  all  the  parties  involved.  Some 
of  the  best  known  efficiency  engineers  are  point- 
ing out  that  true  efficiency  does  not  mean  the 
lowest  wage  or  the  highest  dividend.  H.  L. 
Gantt  points  out  that  when  the  management  can- 
not keep  all  its  machines  busy  it  should  not  expect 
dividends  on  the  idle  machines.  In  other  words 


152  LABOR  TURNOVER 

idle  capital  should  not  expect  returns  any  more 
than  idle  labor. 

Whatever  the  method  of  adjusting  the  returns 
from  both  labor  and  capital,  the  principle  of 
the  square  deal  must  be  observed  if  we  are  to 
have  industrial  peace  and  to  share  in  the  pros- 
perity which  will  come  after  the  period  of  read- 
justment. Many  of  the  old  idols  will  fall  by 
the  wayside  and  vested  privileges  will  go  the  way 
of  empires  and  kingdoms.  Few  things  will 
remain  as  they  were  before  the  great  war.  Pro- 
duction is  more  necessary  than  ever  before  and 
we  must  utilize  every  means  of  securing  it. 
Harmony  will  add  much  to  the  total  output. 

It  is  in  the  hope  that  by  interesting  the  real 
progressives  of  both  capital  and  labor  we  can 
work  out  an  equitable  solution  of  the  many  prob- 
lems, that  this  little  book  has  been  written. 
And  with  the  motto  of  the  square  deal  before  us, 
and  a  true  sense  of  humanity  and  democracy, 
we  can  all  do  something  for  the  industry  and 
for  the  country  as  a  whole. 


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